2,16 


Dr.  Axel  Emit  Gibson 


Southern  Branch 
of  the 

University  of  California 

Los  Angeles 


Form  L  1 


This  book  is  DUE  on  last  date  stamped  below 


UN 


•927 


APR  1 6  194?) 


NOV    41952 

rr-    29 

9     196t 


APR  12  1962 


NEW     LIGHT 

ON 

LIVING 

DR.   AXEL  EMIL  GIBSON 


Copyright,  April  1922 
By  DR.  AXEL  EMIL  GIBSON 


JVxel  tintl  (btbsmt 


"Evolution  is  God's  way  of  doing  things." 
— Prof.  John  Fiske. 


"To  live  for  common  ends  is  to  be  common. 
The  highest  faith   makes  still  the   highest 

man; 
For  we  grow  like  the  things  that  we  believe 

in, 

And  rise  or  sink  as  we  aim  high  or  low. 
No  mirror  shows  such  likeness  of  the  face 
As  the  faith  by  which  we  live  in  heart  and 

mind; 

We  are  in  very  truth  the  thing  we  love : 
And  love,  through  noblest  deeds,  is  born  of 
;  -       faith." 

X 

•j?  — Robert  Browning. 


"Through  the  tube  of  my  microscope  I  am 
watching  the  development  of  a  speck  of  pro- 
toplasm. Strange  possibilities  lie  dormant  in 
that  semi-fluid  globule.  Let  a  moderate  sup- 
ply of  warmth  reach  its  watery  cradle  and 
the  plastic  matter  undergoes  changes  so  rapid 
and  yet  so  steady  and  purpose-like  in  their 
succession  that  one  can  compare  them  to 
those  operated  by  a  skilled  modeler  upon  a 
formless  lump  of  clay.  As  with  an  invisible 
trowel  the  mass  is  divided  into  smaller  and 
smaller  portions  until  it  is  reduced  to  an  ag- 
gregation of  granules — not  too  large  to  build 
withal  the  finest  fabrics  of  the  nascent  or- 
ganism. And  then  it  is  as  if  a  delicate  finger 
traced  out  the  line  to  be  occupied  by  the  com- 
ing spinal  column  and  moulded  the  contour 
of  the  body;  pinching  up  the  head  at  one  end, 
the  tail  at  the  other,  and  fashioning  flank  and 
limb  into  due  proportion  in  such  an  artistic 
way  that  after  watching  the  process  one  is 
almost  involuntarily  possessed  by  the  notion 
that  some  more  subtle  aid  to  vision  than  the 
chromatic  would  show  the  hidden  artist,  with 
his  plan  before  him,  striving  with  skillful 
manipulation  to  perfect  his  work." 

—  Thomas  Huxley,      La\  Sermons. ' ' 


....  "Those  who  do  not  read  the 
book  of  Nature  as  a  whole,  who  do  not 
try  their  faith  by  the  records  of  the 
rocks  and  the  everlasting  stars,  who 
are  oblivious  to  the  great  law  of  evo- 
lution which  has  worked  out  the  sal- 
vation of  man  and  all  living  things, 
through  good  and  ill  report,  through 
delays  and  sufferings  of  agonies  in- 
calculable, who  have  not  learned  that 
the  calamities  of  men  and  nations  are 
not  the  effect  of  some  offended  divin- 
ity, but  the  ups  and  downs  in  the 
long  run  of  human  development,  and 
that  in  the  nature  of  things,  justice  is 
meted  out  to  all  men — if  not  in  a  day, 
then  in  a  year,  or  in  a  thousand  years; 
if  not  to  the  individual,  then  to  his 
family,  or  to  his  race — those  who  take 
no  account  of  all  these  things  soon 
lose  their  reckoning  in  times  like 

ours." — John  Burroughs. 


Forword 

Plato  was  right;  no  man  turns  his 
back  to  the  light — knowingly.  We  sin 
in  ignorance,  and  often  in  innocence. 
Yet  the  great  laws  of  life  do  not  change 
their  courses  or  suspend  their  opera- 
tions because  of  the  failure  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  realize  the  nature  of  the  forces 
his  attitude  brings  into  action.  For 
whatever  we  sow,  we  must  reap ;  and  if 
we  sow  weed  in  place  of  seed,  nature 
cannot  stop  her  world-embracing,  bio- 
logic advance  for  the  sake  of  correcting 
individual  mistakes. 

Yet  as  long  as  we  have  eyes,  with 
which  to  see,  and  ears  to  hear,  we  have 
no  more  right  to  find  fault  with  nature, 
than  if  we  should  be  drenched  by  a  rain- 
storm after  having  neglected  to  bring 

with  us  our  umbrella  or  raincoat 

Knowledge  is  needed  at  any  cost, 
—knowledge  and  judgment;  and  the 
laws  of  life  are  the  teachers  which, 
with  unerring  certainty,  at  once  pro- 
tect and  guide  us  in  the  right  direction, 
no  matter  how  circuitous  and  obscure 
the  course  may  appear. 

In  a  universe,  governed  by  construc- 
tive and  sustaining  laws,  where  every 
aspect  of  life  works  for  harmony,  health 
and  power,  it  is  not  only  our  right,  but 
our  duty  to  be  well.  Sickness  stands  for 
friction  and  discord,  due  to  the  attitude 
an  individual  takes  to  his  environment 
in  terms  of  thought  or  act.  Nature 
stamps  the  mark  of  diseass  on  the  brow 


of  disloyalty,  when  we  allow  our  desires 
and  appetites  to  menace  our  health  by 
life-sapping  indulgences.  For  any  in- 
dulgence which  violates  the  laws  of 
health,  and  impairs  our  usefulness,  is 
an  attack  upon  life  itself,  impeding  not 
only  our  own  career,  but  strikes  discord 
and  chaos  into  the  very  heart-life  of  an 
interrelated  and  reciprocal  humanity. 

A  diseased  individual  is  a  side-tracked 
engine,  derailed  by  obstructions  thrown 
in  his  way  by  his  own  mistakes.  And 
while  medicine  may  succeed  in  pushing 
him  onwards  over  the  rough  and  un- 
paved  route  of  chronic  ailment,  it  is 
only  loyalty  to  life,  in  terms  of  natural 
living,  that  can  ever  bring  him  back  on 
his  native  tracks,  where  life  again  as- 
serts its  smooth,  frictionless  and  self- 
regenerating  power.  To  know  the  meth- 
od of  living  which  brings  about  this 
restoration  of  natural  health  and  power, 
should  be  the  duty  of  every  human  be- 
ing. And  it  is  the  mission  of  this  book 
to  shed  such  light  upon  the  science  and 
philosophy  of  living,  that  the  individual 
may  not  only  see  the  truth,  but  also 
realize  the  supreme  reason  and  logic 
back  of  the  things  that  happen. 

"What  is  man,"  asks  Carlyle,  in  one 
of  his  essays  and  answers:  "A  breath, 
a  vision,  an  appearance;  a  visualized 
idea  in  the  eternal  mind." 

DR.  AXEL  EMIL  GIBSON. 

Los  Angeles,  Calif.,  March  25,  1922. 


Index 

1.  Up-to-Nature — not  "Back-to-Nature." 

2.  The  Difference  Between  Looking  at  Nature  or 

into  Nature. 

3.  Historical  "Back-to-Nature-Men." 

4.  An  Analysis  of  Forced  Water  Drinking. 

5.  The  "Unfired"  Food  Theory. 

6.  Pepper  and  Salt — Friends  or  Enemies? 

7.  Salt-Treatment  as  a  Cure  for  Cancer  and 

Tuberculosis. 

8.  The  Great  Fruit  Indiscrimination. 

9.  The  Problem  of  Quantity  in  Feeding. 

10.  The  Einstein  Theory  Applied  to  Life. 

11.  Self-Directed  Evolution. 

12.  "Lest  we  Forget." 


New  Light  on  Living 


UP-TO-NATURE,  NOT  BACK-TO-NATURE 

THERE  seems  to  be  a  tendency  in  ordinary 
human  nature  to  try  to  repair  the  conse- 
quences of  one  error  by  committing  another. 
All  throughout  history  we  find  these  mental  cruisers 
on  the  highseas  of  life,  pursuing  theories  and  appear- 
ances in  order  to  prove  their  preconceived  notions 
with  regard  to  some  problem  of  life,  continually 
shifting  their  course  from  one  extreme  departure 
of  experimentation  to  another.  The  poise  of  exist- 
ence, the  balance  of  judgment,  the  middle  of  the 
road  —  in  a  word,  the  shortest  line  between  two 
points  —  has  always  been  the  most  difficult  achieve- 
ment in  the  career  of  self-seeking  and  self-serving 
philosophers. 

In  one  of  his  stories,  Mark  Twain  speaks  of  a 
steamboat  owner  on  the  Mississippi  River,  who 
advertised  for  a  pilot  to  run  one  of  his  boats.  When 
the  applicant  appeared,  he  was  asked  if  he  knew  the 
exact  location  of  the  various  snags  and  reefs  of  the 
river.  The  man  shook  his  head.  "What !"  exclaimed 
the  owner.  "Do  you  expect  me  to  trust  you  with  a 
boat  if  you  don't  know  the  obstructions  you  may 
run  up  against?"  The  pilot  whittled  for  a  moment, 
and  then  drawled  out :  "Well,  sir,  if  you  are  looking 
for  a  man  that  knows  where  all  the  snags  and  reefs 
are  in  the  river,  you  must  find  some  other  fellow; 

IS 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

but  I  know  the  channel  where  the  snags  are  not,  and 
there  is  where  I  calculate  to  do  my  sailing." 

It  is  not  necessary  to  know  all  the  snags  and 
bumps  of  the  moral  and  mental  world  to  find  one's 
way  into  peace,  service  and  security.  The  real 
important  phase  of  the  research  lies  in  the  motive 
of  the  research,  and  whether  the  latter  stands  for 
the  universal  advancement  and  betterment  for  each 
and  all  of  the  creatures  on  earth.  Life,  to  be  safe 
and  worth  while,  must  be  gauged  by  a  long-ranged 
vision,  a  reciprocity  of  interest,  and  an  unshakable 
faith  in  the  worth-while  of  the  undertaking. 

For  any  pursuit  which  is  staged  and  engineered 
solely  by  self-interest  and  personal  ambition,  inverts 
the  mental  vision  of  the  individual,  and  renders  the 
perspectives  of  his  field  inaccurate.  In  his  eagerness 
to  find  the  truth  for  its  own  sake,  or  for  the  gratifi- 
cation of  his  personal  ambition,  he  is  likely  to  run 
the  risk  of  losing  the  compass  of  his  judgment,  and 
to  fall  a  victim  for  that  universal  shortcoming  which 
awaits  every  wayfarer  who  has  lost  his  points  of 
orientation :  he  finds  himself  in  the  vicious  circle 
which  causes  the  individual  to  return  on  his  own 
tracks,  and  land  at  the  very  point  of  his  departure. 

The  molluska  when  injured  mends  her  shell  with 
a  pearl;  the  man  when  he  commits  a  mistake,  in 
the  majority  of  cases,  corrects  it  by  committing 
another.  Thus,  in  the  first  case,  we  have  a  creature 
who,  with  its  mere  rudiments  of  vision,  sees  enough 
to  produce  a  pearl,  and  in  the  second  we  have  an 
entity  who  while  endowed  with  the  most  sweeping 
power  of  vision,  yet  fails  to  see  how  to  correct  his 
own  mistake. 

This  because  of  the  fact,  that  we  may  ''have  eyes 
to  see  and  yet  not  see."  For  without  the  medium 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

of  sight,  which  is  light,  there  can  be  no  seeing. 
Hence  in  the  darkness  of  night  a  man  with  the  best 
eyes  may  yet  find  himself  going  astray,  because  of 
his  lack  of  medium  for  seeing.  And  having  thus 
lost  his  power  to  see,  he  unconsciously  or  subcon- 
sciously comes  under  the  influence  of  another  vision, 
the  vision  of  memory,  which  can  see  without  light, 
but  only  the  events  of  the  past.  Thus  the  individual 
finds  .himself  between  two  powers  of  vision — the 
eye,  which  sees  in  the  present,  but  only  in  the  me- 
dium of  light,  and  memory  which  can  see  without 
light,  but  only  in  the  direction  of  the  past.  In  the 
power  and  aptitude  of  the  individual  to  respond  to 
either  of  these  guidances,  lies  his  course  of  direction 
— forward  or  backward. 

In  this  fact  lies  the  explanation  of  people,  lost  in 
the  night,  who  have  found  themselves  returning  into 
their  own  tracks,  because  under  the  sway  of  the 
vicious  circle,  which  always  grips  the  man  who  loses 
his  light — physical  or  mental — and  leads  him  back 
to  the  point  of  his  departure.  The  weaker  his  vision 
of  the  future,  the  more  vacillating  and  uncertain 
his  steps,  the  stronger  becomes  the  pull  upon  him 
from  the  past;  while  his  train  of  thought,  fading 
into  theories  and  fancies,  turns  his  face  toward 
life's  past  stages,  and  gives  rise  to  the  Back-to- 
Nature  Man.  For  the  past,  with  its  memories,  is  a 
mere  depositary  of  records,  formed  by  the  once 
active  life-drama  of  a  continuously  vanishing  pres- 
ent. Hence  it  is  only  through  a  resolute  control  of 
our  perceptive  faculties,  focused  in  the  light  of 
truth,  and  guaged  by  a  firm  conviction  in  the  possi- 
bilities of  realizing  every  desire  that  makes  for  hu- 
man welfare — that  we  may  escape  from  losing  our- 
selves in  the  shadow-theories  which  the  force  of  an 


15 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

ungovernable  memory  leads  us  into.  The  indi- 
vidual must  always  be  greater  than  his  past,  or  his 
evolution  comes  to  a  standstill.  Memory  is  a  men- 
tal archive,  the  hall  of  records,  so  to  speak,  of  ac- 
complished or  lost  opportunities,  and  has  value  to 
us  as  a  means  of  comparison  and  adjustment,  rather 
than  as  a  guiding  and  constructive  force  in  decipher- 
ing and  unveiling  the  future. 


16 


II 


THE  DIFFERENCE  BETWEEN  LOOKING  AT 
NATURE  AND  INTO  NATURE 

THE  principle  involved  in  the  Back-to-Nature 
fallacy  has  been  one  of  the  great,  retarding 
factors  in  the  career  of  individual  evolution. 
For  to  go  "back-to-nature"  is  not  only  to  lose  the 
opportunities  of  the  present,  but  also  to  miss  the 
vision  of  the  future,  as  it  is  in  the  exhaustive  reali- 
zation of  the  present,  that  the  future  designs  be- 
come revealed.  For  it  is  here,  in  this  living  present, 
that  we  find  the  vision  which  the  conjuror  of  the 
Arabian  tale  found  in  his  magic  crystal,  causing  the 
future  to  reflect  its  visage ;  it  is  in  the  experimental 
field  of  individual  evolution  that  the  on-rush  of  sen- 
sations, emotions,  impulses,  visions  and  conceptions 
bring  out  life's  deeper  meaning,  for  us  to  contem- 
plate, analyze,  penetrate,  comprehend  and  interpret, 
in  terms  of  service,  beauty  and  usefulness. 

Hence  to  the  extent  that  a  phase  of  evolution  be- 
comes a  known  and  utilized  fact  to  human  under- 
standing it  passes  into  one  of  those  steps  of  human 
progress  which  successively  have  served  the  indi- 
vidual as  a  means  of  advance,  and  in  its  turn  is  to 
give  way  to  other  steps.  As  a  separate  factor  in 
active  progressive  life  each  particular  event  has  lost 
its  usefulness,  and  to  be  guided  by  its  memory  is 
to  return  upon  one's  own  career  and  pass  into  the 
vicious  circle  of  dogmatism,  confusion  and  failure. 


17 


IMITATION  —  MENTAL  SUICIDE 

Every  great  invention  or  discovery  was  ever 
the  result  of  original  individual  conceptions,  often 
absolutely  contrary  to  the  course  and  method  pur- 
sued by  evolution  itself.  In  his  invention  of  the 
phonograph,  Thomas  Edison  made  a  discovery 
which  strictly  illustrates  this  fact.  As  long  as 
the  inventor  imitated  the  natural  design  involved 
in  the  structures  of  the  organ  of  voice,  and  repro- 
duced with  minute  faithfulness  the  anatomical  ele- 
ments of  the  throat — its  larynx  and  pharynx,  its 
cricoid  cartilage  and  lingual  ligaments,  etc.,  he  met 
with  mere  failures.  It  was  only  under  the  strain 
and  stress  of  intellectual  applications  that  he  finally 
struck  a  rift  in  his  mental  atmosphere,  when  out 
from  the  clouds  of  speculations  sprang  a  ray  of  that 
deeper  consciousness  called  intuition,  by  which  light 
of  understanding  was  shed  upon  his  problem.  The 
process  is  universal.  In  Darwin's  Gorilla  Ape,  who, 
for  generations,  had  been  brooding  over  his  neces- 
sity to  open  the  shell  of  the  cocoanut  to  get  at  its 
interior,  we  find  the  same  light  in  terms  of  instinct 
revealed  to  the  struggling  anthropoid  the  use  of  tvro 
stones  as  the  primitive  anvil  and  sledge  hammer. 
A  new  field  of  evolution  had  thus  been  opened  for 
the  simian  consciousness.  In  place  of  imitating  the 
anatomy  of  the  human  throat,  with  its  staggering 
complex  of  self-adjusting  vital  lever-action  and  au- 
tomatic vocal  technique,  the  genius  of  Edison 
grasped  the  same  principles  as  nature  herself — the 
principle  of  vibration — and  applied  it  to  his  own 
system  of  vocal  mechanics.  On  the  responsive  me- 
dium of  tonal  vibration  the  human  voice  was  caught 


18 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

and  registered  in  its  finest  modulations,  preserved 
and  reproduced  with  the  accuracy  of  life  itself.  The 
phonograph  was  invented:  a  machine  talking  in 
terms  of  human  song  and  language  had  become  a 
tangible  reality. 

The  invention  of  the  flying  machine,  to  be  a  suc- 
cess, must  find  its  basis  and  outset,  not  in  a  me- 
chanic imitation  of  the  flight  of  the  birds,  but  in  the 
discovery  of  the  principle  which  makes  it  possible 
for  the  birds  to  neutralize  the  force  of  gravity  and 
use  the  air  with  the  same  safety  of  support  as  the 
quadrupeds  use  the  earth.  The  builders  of  the  aero- 
plane occupy  the  same  position  in  relation  to  flying, 
as  Edison  once  in  working  out  the  problem  of  his 
talking  machine.  The  knowledge  which  is  to  render 
aerial  navigation  an  undertaking  of  controllable 
safety  has  not  yet  been  found.  A  new  departure 
must  be  struck;  the  problem  to  be  solved  is  that  of 
gravitation  rather  than  of  aviation;  the  problem 
of  suspending  and  overcoming  the  menacing  influ- 
ence which  the  relentless  pull  of  the  earth  exert* 
upon  the  things  of  the  earth.  No  imitation  of  me- 
chanical structure  will  insure  safety  and  success  to 
the  ambitions  of  the  human  mind  in  its  struggle  for 
supremacy  over  elemental  gravity.  Knowledge  is 
the  only  power — knowledge  not  merely  of  appear- 
ances but  of  realities ;  not  in  the  control  of  mechanics 
only,  but  of  dynamics ;  not  of  a  hand-to-hand  wrest- 
ling with  archaic  forces,  but  with  intuitive  under- 
standing and  subsequent  control  of  the  principles 
which  constitute  the  directing,  animating  and  sus- 


19 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

taining  principle  back  of  the  wonderful  phenome- 
non of  bird  flight.* 

Only  to  the  extent  man  knows,  can  he  lead,  and 
only  to  the  extent  he  leads,  can  he  conquer  and  con- 
trol. Like  the  Sphinx  of  the  Ancients,  nature 
must  either  be  controlled  or  be  suffered  to  control; 
must  either  be  the  master  or  the  servant ;  either  help 
us  or  crush  us.  And  having  brought  her  under  con- 
trol, we  should  interpret  rather  than  imitate  her 
methods.  The  back-to-nature-man  pleads  imitation ; 
the  up-to-natu re-man  interpretation.  The  inventor 
or  discoverer  penetrates  nature,  reveals  her  princi- 
ples and  releases  her  powers.  What  Thomas  Edi- 
son is  doing  in  the  mechano-dynamic  world,  Luther 
Burbank  is  doing  in  the  vital-dynamic.  In  his  mir- 
acle gardens  at  Santa  Rosa,  California,  this  inspired 
laborer  in  the  vineyard  of  the  Lord,  is  demonstrat- 
ing what  Nature  can  accomplish  under  the  guidance 
of  a  master.  The  Crimson  Poppy,  unknown  in  the 
entire  domain  of  visible  nature,  the  pitless  prune, 
spineless  cactus,  seedless  blackberry,  and  a  host  of 
other  miracles,  are  wrought  in  the  silent,  invisible 
workshops  of  nature's  deeper  life  under  the  leader- 
ship of  the  California  wizard,  whose  intuition, 
through  untiring,  self-sacrificing  labors,  has  re- 
vealed to  him  the  ways  and  means  of  nature,  and  in- 
itiated him  into  her  mysteries.  More  perhaps  than 
any  naturalist,  in  this  or  any  other  country  and  any 
other  era,  Luther  Burbank  has  demonstrated,  in  ac- 
tual tangible  results,  that  nature  unaided  fails.  For 
in  its  higher  expressions  of  life,  nature  depends  on 
culture  and  man-directed  evolution,  on  loving  mo- 

•The  problem  of  nautical  navigation  has  been  solved  on  this  very 
basis.  By  the  Introduction  of  the  semi  vacuum  In  our  sailing  vessels, 
we  have  succeeded  in  neutralizing  the  law  of  gravity  in  its  relation 
to  floating  bodies — In  themselves  heavier  than  the  medium  in  which 
they  are  suspended. 

SO 


NEW  LIGHT  O/V  LIVING 

lives  in  research,  and  untiring,  altruistic  purposes  of 
application.  Leave  the  apple  tree  alone  to  the  un- 
aided care  of  sun  and  wind,  and  after  a  few  genera- 
tions its  output  will  show  evidence  of  retrogression, 
slowly  sinking  back  into  the  matrix  of  the  crude 
apple,  which  yet  grows  in  the  highlands  of  Asia, 
from  whence  it  came. 

Similarly  with  the  Royal  Chrysanthemum  of  our 
flower  shows,  which  the  genius  and  affection  of  man 
lift  up  from  the  skimpy,  little,  wild  flower  that  is 
yet  to  be  found  in  nature's  primitive  simplicity  upon 
the  hillsides  of  China  and  Japan.  The  same  condi- 
tions meet  us  in  the  luscious  naval  orange,  whose 
humble  ancestry  is  still  extant  in  a  bitter,  small- 
sized,  inedible  fruit,  indigenous  to  the  sterile  soil  of 
the  Peruvian  Highlands.  Even  the  animal  testifies 
to  this  law  of  life — this  principle  of  being  "our 
brothers'  keepers,"  on  every  plane  of  life — as  can 
be  seen  in  the  Kentucky  thoroughbred  "Black 
Beauty"  stallion,  which  human  care  and  untiring 
patience  gradually  evolved  from  the  primitive  horse 
of  the  prairie  to  a  veritable  human-like  intellect. 
Cases  of  these  kind  are  innumerable,  and  emphasize 
the  ancient  fact,  that  to  assist  Nature  does  not  mean 
to  go  back-to-nature,  but  rather  to  be  moving  in  Her 
own  direction.  For  in  order  to  know,  we  must  first 
be  able  to  see,  as  no  judgment  can  be  formed  until 
the  sense  of  sight  has  been  ordered  to  verify  the 
statements  made  by  the  other  sense-organs.  But  as 
the  eye  can  operate  only  in  the  medium  of  light,  it 
follows,  that  to  obtain  perfect  seeing,  the  organism 
must  not  only  have  a  perfect  eye,  but  also  perfect 
light,  which  is  truth. 

For  light,  when  applied  to  the  mind,  and  as  a 
mental  phenomenon,  is  truth  itself,  while  seeing, 


21 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

considered  from  the  same  point  of  view,  is  the  func- 
tion of  the  mind  to  ascertain  the  truth,  and  thus 
stands  for  reasoning  intelligence  or  the  power  to 
know.  And  as  there  can  be  no  sight  without  light, 
so  there  can  be  no  knowledge  without  truth.  To 
walk  in  physical  darkness  always  means  uncertainty, 
stumbling  and  mistakes ;  while  to  walk  in  mental 
darkness,  which  is  absence  of  truth,  is  characterized 
by  that  mental  uncertainty,  vague  speech,  wild  the- 
orizing and  general  dogmatizing,  that  comes  from 
ignorance,  and  from  efforts  to  ascertain  facts  with- 
out the  guidance  of  truth.  Finally,  the  most  om- 
inous part  of  the  entire  category  is  found  in  the 
fact  that  while  physical  light  is  shed  upon  every  eye 
that  faces  the  day,  the  light  of  the  mind,  which  is 
truth  itself,  comes  only  to  him  who  consciously  re- 
sponds to  truth,  talks  the  truth,  acts  the  truth, — in 
a  word — lives  the  truth.  Hence  falsehood,  sham, 
pretense,  insincerity,  vice,  in  their  failure  to  respond 
to  truth,  notwithstanding  the  keenest  power  of  logic 
and  inductive  reasoning,  will  never  discover  a  single 
original  truth  for  the  benefit  of  life.  The  discoverer 
must  walk  in  the  light  of  truth,  which  alone  is  pos- 
sible if  he  lives  the  truth,  acts,  speaks  and  thinks 
the  truth.  Thousands  of  back-to-nature  devotees, 
with  all  their  professed  love  for  nature,  and  with  the 
same  opportunities  as  Luther  Burbank,  but,  ani- 
mated by  no  higher  motives  than  the  gratification 
of  personal  ambitions  and  social  comforts,  have 
failed  to  respond  to  the  vision  of  life's  deeper  mean- 
ing and  accomplished  nothing.  For  without  the 
vision  of  truth,  there  can  arise  no  power  to  know, 
no  intelligence  to  interpret,  and  no  mastery  to  di- 
rect the  creative  energies  of  nature.  In  place  of  en- 
listing as  standard  bearer  for  the  advance  army  of 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

evolution,  the  back-to-nature-man  retires  to  the  rear 
to  fall  in  line  with  its  buckaneers  and  canteen 
keepers. 


Ill 

HISTORICAL    "B ACK-TO-NATURE-MEN" 

NOW  and  then  a  "back-to-nature-man"  rises 
into  historical  eminence.  Yet,  notwithstand- 
ing the  often  overwhelming  powers  of  these 
men  as  leaders,  and  thinkers,  their  historical  influ- 
ence has  always  brought  the  hands  on  the  Dial  of 
Progress  a  few  stages  backward.  Thus  it  took 
France  a  hundred  years  or  more  to  recuperate  from 
the  religious  iconoclism  and  ethical  vandalism  of  her 
great  "back-to-nature-man,"  Jean  Jacques  Rosseau. 
Confusing  the  principles  of  morality  with  "natural- 
ness," of  truthfulness  with  brutality  and  sincerity 
with  vulgarity,  this  in  many  respects  great  mind, 
set  a  premium  on  obscenity  by  substituting  simplic- 
ity and  innocence  for  brutality  and  unrestrained  in- 
stincts, until  in  the  course  of  time  this  reversion  or 
perversion  of  social,  communal,  political  and  relig- 
ious relationship  went  down  in  human  history  in 
the  universal  smash-up  known  as  the  French  Revo- 
lution. 

A  later  and  even  greater  "back-to-nature-man," 
—the  Russian  Socialist  and  philosopher,  Count  Leo 
Tolstoi — has  been  more  responsible  than  any  other 
individual  factor  in  landing  the  Russian  Empire  on 
the  rocks  of  perverted  liberalism.  He  destroyed  his 
people's  faith  in  the  theory  of  the  Imperial  Russian 
Government,  without  putting  anything  in  its  place — 
without  even  telling  them  that  another  kind  of  gov- 
ernment was  possible — but  left  the  problem  to  be 
solved  by  the  anarchist.  And  while  it  would  be 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

wholly  unfair  to  charge  Tolstoi  with  the  atrocities 
of  the  Bolshevists'  rule,  we  cannot  escape  from  the 
conviction  that  his  writings  created  the  atmosphere 
that  made  these  atrocities  possible.  For  with  all  its 
moral  eminence,  his  philosophy  does  not  distinguish 
between  the  principles  of  regenerate  and  degenerate 
nature,  between  centralized  rule  and  popularized  li- 
cense, between  system  and  caprice.  The  success  of 
any  organism,  be  it  an  individual  or  a  nation,  has 
its  basis  in  the  surrender  of  all  motives  other  than 
those  that  aim  directly  at  the  betterment  and  salva- 
tion of  every  unit,  high  or  low,  complex  or  simple, 
living  under  the  power  of  its  influence.  Reciproc- 
ity, with  its  moving  force  in  brotherhood,  holds  the 
common  devisor  which  alone  can  yield  the  human 
equation.  Looked  at  from  its  widest  angle  there  re- 
mains no  doubt  that  the  wealthy  class  of  the  com- 
munity needs  the  assistance  of  the  poor,  as  vitally 
as  the  poor  needs  the  help  of  the  wealthy.  Will- 
ingness of  each  one,  rich  or  poor,  to  contribute  all 
he  can  offer  in  service  and  good  will  to  the  general 
advances  of  life  as  manifested  in  the  organized  com- 
monwealth, can  alone  save  the  world  from  disaster. 
And,  so  far  from  being  a  means  toward  this  goal, 
a  philosophy  urging  a  return  to  the  rudiments  of 
existence,  to  a  state  where  each  one  serves  himself, 
attends  his  own  needs,  cobbles  his  own  boots,  con- 
strues and  operates  his  own  means  and  ways  of  tran- 
sit, is  his  own  locomotive,  tractor,  mail-carrier, 
manufacturer,  and  medium  of  exchange,  etc., 
shackles  and  menaces  the  human  race  in  its  march 
toward  true  freedom.  Mankind  must  not  be  hin- 
dered in  its  discoveries  of  new  agencies  of  power  and 
magnificence;  every  means  of  assistance  should  be 
given  to  promote  and  safeguard  the  imagination  of 


25 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

man  in  exploring  the  regions  of  the  unseen,  unheard 
and  unrealized.  No  invention  of  constructiveness, 
aiming  at  taking  away  the  burden  of  physical  drudg- 
ery from  the  life  of  man,  can  possibly  interfere  with 
the  economic  safety  of  the  community.  No  form  of 
ingenuity  or  miracle-working  inventiveness  can  en- 
danger human  welfare  as  long  as  the  inspiring  and 
governing  motives  stand  for  reciprocal  service  and 
philanthropic  interest.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is 
no  form  of  life  so  simple,  no  community  so  crude, 
that  individual  selfishness  cannot  turn  it  into  agen- 
cies of  destructiveness  and  disaster.  The  form  and 
conditions  of  any  given  era,  merely  registers  the  de- 
gree in  which  the  indwelling  principle  of  humanity 
succeeds  in  impressing  itself  upon  the  evolutionary 
current.  And  to  go  back-to-nature  is  thus  simply 
to  oppose  the  tidal  wave  of  an  all-embracing  cos- 
mic consciousness,  sweeping  through  the  elemental 
world  in  its  course  toward  a  self-understood,  self- 
governing  and  self-directed  evolution. 

"Let  us  remember,"  says  a  writer  in  "The  New 
Way,"  "that  our  thoughts  and  virtues  are  going  into 
solution  all  the  time  in  the  great  human  sea,  and 
that  in  the  long  run  every  one  has  his  full  oppor- 
tunity to  leave  an  eternal,  deathless  benediction  be- 
hind him." 


IV 
THE  ANALYSIS  OF  FORCED  WATER  DRINKING 

THERE  can  be  no  doubt  that  we  owe  our  health 
and  strength  to  nature  in  and  through  our 
obedience  to  her  laws.  And  in  order  to  ascer- 
tain the  significance  of  these  laws  in  relation  to  life 
and  power,  our  organism  is  equipped  with  a  sys- 
tem of  special  sensation,  the  function  of  which  is 
to  keep  the  individual  informed  about  his  needs  and 
necessities,  with  regard  to  fuel  for  the  heat,  and 
building  material  for  the  repair  of  the  living,  physio- 
logical engine  placed  at  his  disposal.  The  material 
thus  required  is  contained  in  the  food  we  eat,  the 
water  we  drink  and  the  air  we  breathe;  and  to  at- 
tend to  these  functions,  promptly  and  sanely,  in  con- 
formity to  the  law  of  demand  and  supply,  consti- 
tutes the  fine  art  of  common  sense  in  diet. 

Where  this  law  is  overlooked  and  the  individual 
allows  himself  more  fuel  and  building-material  than 
required  for  the  perfect  up-keep  of  his  fires  and 
structures  of  life,  there  will  accumulate  an  excess 
which  in  the  course  of  time  either  must  be  burned 
up  by  the  back  fires  of  fever,  the  abnormal  sewer- 
discharge  of  catarrh,  or  stowed  away  in  the  physio- 
logical garbage  cans  of  body  tumors.  If  made  to 
realize  his  serious  situation,  and  to  act  promptly 
and  in  time,  the  individual  can  prevent  disaster  by 
introducing  some  drastic,  in  themselves  abnormal 
measures  of  expediency,  such  as  a  longer  or  shorter 
period  of  the  physiological  rest  we  term  fasting, 
accompanied  by  a  flushing  of  the  cellular  and  capil- 


HEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

lary  drainage  pipes  of  his  system,  in  the  form  of 
excessive  water  drinking.  Through  these  measures 
it  may  be  quite  possible  to  neutralize  the  effect  of 
former  excesses  in  diet — especially  the  over-indul- 
gence in  heavy  proteids  such  as  beans,  meat,  eggs 
and  the  concentrated  or  extracted  forms  of  carbo- 
hydrate known  as  sugar  and  cream.  In  this  case 
an  enforced  water  flushing  and  a  strict  vegetarian 
diet  would  be  a  good  venture,  as  pure  water,  plenty 
of  fresh  air,  raw  fruit  and  green  vegetables  consti- 
tute the  great  "chimney  sweeps"  by  which  nature 
cleans  up  the  obstructions  in  our  waste-laden, 
choked-up  physiological  furnaces. 

So  far,  so  good.  But  when  this  same  course  of 
intense  elimination  is  applied  promiscously,  and 
suggested  to  cases  that  suffer  from  enemia,  ner- 
vousness and  other  effects  from  a  one-sided  indul- 
gence in  raw,  acidic  fruit,  with  its  irritating  rough- 
age of  peelings,  seeds  and  hull,  raw  cereals,  etc., 
with  water  to  drink  "by  the  gallon,"  the  system 
runs  the  danger  of  getting  its  synovial  fluids — the 
lubricating  oils  of  the  organism — cleaned  out  with 
the  rest.  Having  lost  this  all-important  oil  of 
lubrication,  the  delicate  nerve  strands  rub  against 
their  dried  up  insulators  in  a  nerve-racking  fash- 
ion, and  neuralgia,  neurites  and  rheumatism  are 
formed  in  the  scrambling  washers, — the  carti- 
lages and  delicate  membranes  of  the  joints. 

A  constitutionally  restless  and  overstrung  ner- 
vous system  is,  by  sheer  force  of  its  nervousness, 
already  stressing  the  glands  of  its  secretions  into 
gushing  artesian  wells,  that  flush  the  physiological 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

ducts  and  passages  to  the  point  of  cellular  inunda- 
tion. Hence  a  forced  water  drinking — while  ben- 
eficial to  the  over-nourished,  sluggish  individual,  as 
promoting  the  action  of  his  congested  ducts  of 
elimination — must  necessarily  interfere  with  these 
very  functions,  should  the  individual  be  of  the 
nervous,  anemic  type.  For  to  add  to  the  liquid 
percentage  of  a  digestion,  already  surcharged 
with  its  own  abnormal  secretions,  means  to  weaken 
the  keenness  and  incisive  power  of  the  enzymes 
upon  which  the  processes  of  digestion,  assimila- 
tion and  elimination  depend.  The  business  of 
digestion,  already  hampered  by  the  excess  of  its 
secretory  fluids,  is  compelled  to  go  into  a  state  of 
solution  on  account  of  its  "watered  stock" — a  con- 
dition which  in  physiology  means  nervous  dyspep- 
sia. And  the  state  of  constipation  which  in  most 
cases  constitutes  the  main  reason  for  an  excessive 
water  drinking,  may  not  infrequently,  by  the  very 
weakening  of  the  nerves  of  peristalsis,  due  to  the 
abnormal  increase  of  fluid,  become  intensified  and 
more  difficult  of  cure.  So  true  to  the  conditions  is 
this  statement,  that  the  so-called  "Schrot  treat- 
ment," practiced  in  German  and  Swedish  sana- 
toria, consists  in  keeping  certain  types  of  indi- 
viduals on  an  absolutely  dry  diet,  allowing  no 
water,  often  for  a  period  of  two  or  more  weeks,  to 
enter  the  system.  Under  the  strain  of  this  en- 
forced thirst,  the  structural  cells  of  the  organism 
are  compelled  to  exude  the  stagnant,  rancid  resi- 
due of  their  old,  retarded  secretions,  and  thus  by 
a  thorough  cleaning  and  renewing  of  the  cell 
structures  succeed  in  giving  to  the  entire  field  of 


MEW  LIGHT  ON 


metabolism  a  stronger,  purer  and  more  adequate 
output  of  glandular  secretions.* 

Thus  we  frequently  have  to  face  conditions 
when  a  treatment,  which  in  one  case  may  have 
proven  itself  so  helpful,  —  in  another,  will  send  a 
patient  into  physiological  wreckage.  Healing 
means  a  restoration  of  the  disturbed  vital  balances 
of  an  organism,  whether  the  process  involves  fast- 
ing or  feasting,  thirst  or  inundation,  vegetarian  or 
carnivorous  diet.  Abnormal  conditions  require 
abnormal  remedies,  but  the  saving  grace  in  any 
process  is  determined  by  a  judgment  that  can 
guide  with  scientific  accuracy  the  vital  changes 
ringing  in  upon  the  stage  of  life,  either  in  terms  of 
health  or  ruin. 


*"Some  people  are  never  thirsty.  They  should  go  out  and 
exercise  or  work  until  they  sweat  a  little  and  then  they  will 
get  thirsty.  It  does  no  good  to  swill  down  a  lot  of  liquid  to 
slosh  around  in  a  distended  stomach.  If  there  is  real  thirst, 
the  result  of  physical  activity,  the  tissues  will  absorb  water 
like  a  sponge  and  your  water  drinking  will  benefit  you." — 
"Healthy  Home,"  quoted  by  the  "Medical  Summary,"  Jan. 
1st,  1922. 


30 


THE  "UNFIRED"  FOOD-THEORY 

FOLLOWING  the  theory  that  whatever  in- 
creases the  rugged  strength  of  the  animal 
must  also  increase  the  strength  of  the  indi- 
vidual, the  back-to-nature  devotee  reaches  out  for 
the  raw-food-diet,  in  which  he  includes  the  hull 
and  pealings  by  which  nature  protects  the  grains, 
fruit  and  vegetables  of  her  third  kingdom.  It  is 
readily  seen,  however,  that  if  the  raw  or  "unfired" 
diet  theory  was  true,  the  animal  should  find  itself 
in  the  same  position  to  the  mineral  stratum  of 
nature,  as  the  human  being  is  to  the  raw  grains. 
For  every  plane  of  life  brings  out  powers  and 
capacities  of  an  entity  in  response  to  the  vital  con- 
ditions peculiar  to  that  plane.  Hence,  just  as  a 
fish  possesses  the  phenomenal  power  to  oxidize 
its  tissues  from  the  water  in  which  it  swims,  and 
the  plant  the  not  less  wonderful  agency  of  an 
exudate  by  which  it  can  break  up  and  decompose, 
with  its  tiny  roots,  the  rock  itself,  so  the  animal 
has  in  its  stomach  a  fireless  cooker  by  which  it  can 
tear  up  and  peptonize  the  cellulose  and  starchea 
which  the  average  human  stomach  has  no  power 
to  bring  out.  For  evolution  is  a  continuous  ad- 
vancement of  life  from  lower  to  higher  forms  of 
expression;  from  the  elemental  to  the  mental; 
from  the  power  of  brawn  to  the  power  of  brain; 
from  the  chemistry  and  physiology  of  nature,  to 
the  mental,  moral  and  spiritual  processes  of  the 
soul.  Hence  the  entire  trend  of  evolution  is  a  less- 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

ening  of  the  quantitative  and  a  corresponding  in- 
crease of  the  qualitative  powers  of  the  advancing 
entities  of  life. 

Thus  in  the  cellular  secretions  of  its  roots,  the 
plant  possesses  an  enzyme  which  has  the  power  to 
decompose  the  granite,  and  turn  its  sterile  mole- 
cules into  palpable  vegetable  tissue ;  while  the  ani- 
mal in  its  turn  possesses  a  digestive  power  strong 
enough  to  dextrinate  the  raw  starch  and  intract- 
able cellulose,  which  the  human  stomach  is  leav- 
ing behind  in  its  adaptation  to  higher  vital  needs. 

The  struggle  between  man  and  his  environment 
is  at  present  determined  by  the  direction  in  which 
he  tips  his  vital  balance — either  toward  the  head 
or  the  stomach;  either  toward  thinking  or  vege- 
tating; self-control  or  self-indulgence.  It  is  un- 
mistakable that  all  along  the  human  stage  of  evo- 
lution is  going  on  a  definite  functional  balancing 
between  the  forces  of  the  mind  and  those  of  the 
digestion.  For  it  cannot  be  a  mere  fatuous  coinci- 
dence that  most  of  the  world's  geniuses  have  suf- 
fered with  digestive  difficulties.  The  dyspepsia  of 
Carlyle  has  almost  as  far  famed  a  historical  emi- 
nence as  his  "French  Revolution."  Richard  Wag- 
ner suffered  from  a  life-long  chronic  indigestion. 
Darwin  was  a  victim  to  a  chronic  "mal  de  mer" 
that  compelled  him  annually  to  increase  the  angle 
of  his  posture  to  the  plane  of  his  writing  desk,  in- 
volving a  constant  lowering  of  his  head  toward  the 
level  of  his  stomach.  Herbert  Spencer  was  known 
to  be  incapacitated  for  a  whole  week's  work  by 
indulging  in  what  to  most  people  would  constitute 
an  ordinary  dinner.  And  Alexander  Pope,  in  his 
later  years,  was  mostly  restrained  to  a  diet  of  milk 
soup.  These  cases  are  too  numerable  to  allow  any 


32 


JSEW    LIGHT  O!\  LIVING 

doubt  as  to  the  existence  of  a  biologic  sliding  scale 
between  a  man's  brain  and  his  stomach ;  and  that 
the  progressive,  constructive  thinker  sooner  or 
later  must  choose  between  gross  animal  eating  and 
fine  human  thinking. 

Now  with  gross  eating  we  must  include  every 
form  of  food  which  either  by  its  own  nature  or  by 
its  treatment  and  combination  is  either  indiges- 
tible, or  in  its  digestion  involves  the  expense  of 
energy  beyond  the  vital  income  derived  from  it  by 
the  system. 

In  its  raw  form  the  starch  molecule  for  its  suc- 
cessful dextrinization  requires  the  high-powered 
physiological  engines  of  animal  digestion,  while 
the  ordinary  human  stomach,  to  accomplish  the 
same  feat,  needs  the  assistance  of  the  baking  oven. 
And  while  we  may  find  individuals  that  with  ap- 
parent immunity,  and  sometimes  even  with  the 
flush  of  high  stimulation,  may  succeed  for  a  season 
in  stressing  their  digestive  functions  to  an  extraor- 
dinary pitch,  such  violations  of  dietetic  economy, 
however,  will  result  in  a  general  lessening  of  vital 
resilience,  accompanied  with  nervousness  and 
premature  breakdown.  To  introduce  into  the 
stomach  the  raw  form  of  such  foodstuffs  as  pota- 
toes, beets,  beans,  peas,  seeds,  peelings,  bran,  hull, 
is  to  sport  with  human  energy,  as  the  indigestible 
mass  requires  for  its  treatment  the  bringing  up  of 
constitutional  vital  reserve  forces  which  were  in- 
tended to  be  called  upon  first  in  later  years,  at  an 
age  when  the  current  of  vitality  would  naturally 
begin  to  ebb.  In  heat  and  its  application  we  have 
a  life  and  energy  saving  device ;  and  ever  since 
Prometheus — the  symbolic  incarnation  of  man's 
higher  intelligence — wrestled  fire  from  the  hands 


S3 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

of  a  metaphysical  Zeus,  mankind,  to  the  extent  of 
its  intelligence,  has  profited  by  its  marvelous 
acquisition  and  used  its  services  as  one  of  the  most 
fundamental  and  indispensable  agencies  of  human 
evolution.  Fire  as  a  force  is  as  necessary  for  a  bal- 
anced and  sustained  progress  in  the  vital  and  men- 
tal field  of  existence  as  it  is  in  the  industrial  and 
social. 

The  same  expediency  which  organizes  an  engine 
to  thrash  our  grains,  weave  our  clothes  and  trans- 
mit our  messages,  is,  in  the  form  of  fire,  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  simplification  of  the  labors  of  diges- 
tion and  assimilation,  in  relation  to  certain  food- 
stuffs. The  solar  heat,  stored  up  in  our  fuel,  when 
applied  to  cooking,  releases  the  locked-up  life-en- 
ergies of  our  food  by  intensifying  the  rate  of  its 
molecular  vibrations,  until  the  starch  molecule  de- 
livers its  finest  energies  to  the  human  metabolism. 
Hence,  within  a  certain  range,  the  higher  the  heat, 
the  swifter  become  the  vibrations,  and  the  finer 
and  more  potent  the  released  life  force.  The 
baked  potatoes  will  release  a  higher  energy  than 
the  boiled,  and  the  latter  a  higher  energy  than 
the  raw.  The  same  is  true  with  regard  to  all 
starch  bearing  products.  In  the  northern  countries 
the  farmer  has  found  that,  during  winter,  the 
chickens  produce  more  eggs,  the  cows  more  milk, 
the  hogs  more  pork,  if  the  molecular  vibrations  of 
their  foods — the  grains  and  tubers — have  been 
raised  by  boiling  or  steaming.  It  is  this  same 
power  of  heat,  when  applied  to  the  coffee  bean, 
which  has  the  power  to  turn  its  static  energy  into 
a  veritable  dynamo  of  stimulating  force.  For  the 
cellulose  surrounding  the  bean  molecules  is  so 
compact  and  intractable  that  even  the  heat  of 


NEW  LIGHT  Oi\  LIVING 

boiling  is  insufficient  to  release  its  full  force.  It 
requires  the  intense  vibrations  arising  from  roast- 
ing or  baking  to  burst  the  enclosure  and  set  free 
the  vital  dynamics  imprisoned  within  the  cell-walls 
of  the  coffee  bean. 

Another  example  may  be  furnished  in  the  won- 
derfully stimulating  and  sustaining  power  con- 
tained in  thoroughly  toasted  bread.  By  pouring 
hot  water  on  sliced  and  well  toasted,  whole-wheat 
bread,  and  allowing  it  to  drain  some  ten  or 
fifteen  minutes,  a  liquid  is  obtained  which,  if 
slowly  sipped,  may  sustain  human  life  for  weeks 
and  months.  The  high  frequency  of  vibration  pro- 
duced by  the  intense  dry  heat  of  the  oven  unlocks 
the  latent  energies  in  the  grain,  which  the  oxydiz- 
ing  water  readily  transmits  to  the  metabolism  of 
the  body. 

This  power  of  increased  vibration  to  change 
the  nature  and  condition  of  things  is  universal. 
The  putrid  air  of  the  dungeon  may  be  transmuted 
into  the  refreshing  purity  of  a  spring  wind  by  the 
aid  of  a  powerful  vibrator  dynamo.  As  the  latter 
churns  the  air  into  an  increasing  frequency  of 
vibrations,  the  ensuing  friction  between  the  air 
molecules  gives  rise  to  the  combustion  of  the 
carbon  envelope  which  surrounds  the  oxygen  atom; 
and  the  subsequent  release  of  its  locked  up  energy 
starts  processes  of  chemical  displacement  in  the 
atmosphere.  This  fact  gives  to  the  fanning  de- 
vice of  offices  and  public  halls  a  deeper  and  more 
far-reaching  significance. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  cooking  of  our  food 
stuffs  is  not  merely  for  the  purpose  of  taste,  but 
also  gives  rise  to  an  increasing  vital-dynamic  value 
of  the  elements.  The  destruction  of  the  power  of 


35 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

germination  of  the  grain  by  cooking,  does  only 
affect  the  aspect  of  life  involved  in  propagation, 
not  in  its  power  to  serve  as  medium  for  physiologi- 
cally constructive  life.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
assistance  which  cooking  brings  to  the  body  in  its 
wrestling  with  the  digestion  of  an  impossible 
cellulose,  is  of  immense  significance  to  the  entire 
human  organism,  and  becomes  the  salvaging  of 
incalculable  force  units  on  the  vital  and  intellec- 
tual plane  threatened  by  wreckage  through  ex- 
hausture.  Yet  the  cooking  must  not  be  left  to 
the  care  of  ignorance,  but  should  be  conducted  in 
a  scientific  way.  For  as  it  is  mainly  the  carbon 
and  starch  molecule  of  the  grain  and  tuber  that 
requires  the  high  temperature  for  its  thorough 
dextrinization,  the  food  products  of  the  albumins 
and  carbohydrates,  such  as  are  represented  in  the 
white  of  an  egg,  the  heart  of  celery,  and  the  entire 
field  occupied  by  the  fruits  and  the  leafy  vege- 
tables should  be  enjoyed  in  their  raw  state.  To 
this  should  also  be  classed  the  products  of  the 
animal  world,  as  meat  is  rich  in  organic  salt  and 
albumin,  and  should,  therefore,  be  only  lightly 
cooked — simmered  or  seered,  in  a  chafing  dish, 
rather  than  to  be  "well  done"  through  boiling  or 
frying.  In  preparing  these  foods,  the  tempera- 
ture should  not  be  raised  above  200°  Fahrenheit, 
as  this  temperature  suffices  to  break  the  cellulose 
envelope  without  incurring  the  disorganization  of 
its  albumin  or  the  destruction  of  its  vital  units — 
the  vitamines. 

But  there  are  occasions  in  the  vital  conditions 
of  an  individual  when  even  fruit  must  be  cooked 
to  render  it  safe  to  digestion.  The  gastro-neuros- 
thenic  or  nervous  dyspeptic,  may  bring  upon  him 


36 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

an  attack  of  gastritis  from  the  inability  of  his  dis- 
ordered digestive  nerve  batteries  to  polarize  the 
high-tensioned  vital-electric  energy  discharged 
by  the  raw  fruit.  But  as  the  cooking  changes  the 
polarity  of  the  fruit  from  electric  to  magnetic,  so 
the  dyspeptic  stomach,  in  itself  electrically  polar- 
ized, may,  if  certain  rules  of  food-combinations  are 
observed,  be  able  to  digest  and  assimilate  cooked 
or  simmered  fruits.  That  even,  however,  the  aver- 
age, normal  digestion  can  suffer  from  an  excess 
of  fruit,  is  readily  seen  in  the  nervous,  irritable 
disposition  that  follows  its  over-indulgence.  The 
acidity  of  the  fruit  indicates  its  main  character- 
istic: that  of  cleaner  and  purger;  and  when  the 
greasy  and  carbonacious  deposits  of  the  system 
have  been  removed,  a  continual  indulgence  may 
readily  lead  to  tissue-irritation.  In  other  words, 
fruit,  to  be  safely  indulged  in,  needs  a  physiologi- 
cal or  pathological  basis  to  work  on — a  metabolic 
shock  absorber — so  to  speak — formed  in  and  by 
the  superfluous  accummulations  of  fats  and  car- 
bons in  the  system.  If  this  was  not  so,  the  life  of 
the  Indians  of  this  country,  and  most  of  the  peo- 
ple of  the  northern  countries  in  Europe,  who,  for 
entire  seasons,  are  without  fruits,  would  long  ago, 
have  suffered  extinction. 

The  employment  of  fire  as  a  time-and-energy- 
saving  device  in  the  preparation  of  our  foods,  has 
been  used  by  every  people  of  culture  as  far  as 
history  leaves  any  records.  In  the  king's  cham- 
ber of  the  Great  Pyramid,  M.  Champolion  found 
fragments  of  well  baked  bread,  and  the  Greeks  in 
their  heydays  of  the  Periclean  era  made  their  prin- 
cipal meal  out  of  well  baked  barley  cakes,  ripe 
olives  and  cooked  fish.  In  fact  the  very  gods  of 


9J 
«  / 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

Olympus  feasted  on  carefully  prepared  viands, 
as  did  the  crudest  savage  on  his  rudimentary  bar- 
becues; and  to  the  extent  civilization  has  endowed 
people  with  common  sense  and  practical  ingenuity, 
the  method  of  assisting  their  digestive  and  assimi- 
lative labors  by  the  aid  of  fire,  are  in  historical 
evidence.  And  while  the  back-to-nature-man 
often  refers  to  the  culinary  habits  and  table  man- 
ners of  the  monkey  and  squirrel,  horse  and  ele- 
phant, bears  and  forbears  of  his  quadruped  pre- 
ceptors, as  good  arguments  for  the  "unfired"  food 
theory,  it  must  be  considered  that  in  the  first  place 
the  animals  are  not  permitted  to  indulge  in  light- 
housekeeping,  and  furthermore,  that  the  diges- 
tive apparatus  of  these  early  forbears  are  equipped 
with  power  to  combust  and  dextrinate  the  most 
intractable  starch  and  cellulose.  But  as  has  al- 
ready been  referred  to,  the  animal  can  afford  the 
vital  expense  of  his  high-powered  digestion,  as  its 
main  business  is  to  digest,  vegetate  and  propa- 
gate; while  to  the  extent  man  raises  himself  to  a 
higher  level  with  ideas  and  ideals  above  the  con- 
sideration and  gratification  of  mere  animal  func- 
tions, the  expression  of  personality  becomes  ele- 
vated and  transmuted  from  the  animal,  material- 
istic, sense-governed  plane  to  the  constitutional 
refinement  of  the  higher  mind;  from  gross  auto- 
matic instinct  and  sensuous  impulse  to  the  high 
graded  conditions  of  self-directed  thought  and 
reasoned  intelligence. 


38 


VI 


SALT  AND  PEPPER  IN  THE  VITAL  ECONOMY 

OF  MAN 

THE  business  of  life  is  to  understand  it.  And 
this  understanding  does  not  come  from  one- 
sided theories,  haphazard  judgments  or 
short-sighted  generalizations  regarding  the  mean- 
ing of  life,  but  by  calm  intelligence  and  imper- 
sonal, universal  interest.  The  extremist  who 
either  rides  his  hobby  over  theories  to  the  limit  of 
endurance,  or  refuses  to  enter  the  vital  race- 
track at  all,  are  equally  unsafe  and  unreliable  as 
counselors  in  the  great  problems  of  life  and  health. 
In  the  great  majority  of  cases,  the  food  reformer 
takes  his  cue  from  his  own  mistake,  and  reacts 
to  the  whip  of  personal  suffering  brought  about 
by  his  own  violation  of  some  natural  law.  Having 
ruined  both  his  food  and  his  health  by  an  exces- 
sive use  of  cookery,  frying,  stewing  or  boiling — 
the  individual,  with  panicstricken  suddenness,  re- 
acts to  the  consciousness  of  his  danger  and  swings 
over  to  the  opposite  extreme — to  indulge  in  every- 
thing in  its  raw  form.  Realizing  that  patent-sifted, 
snowr-driven  A-l  flour  causes  congestion,  catarrh, 
constipation,  and  a  host  of  subsequent  pathological 
conditions,  he  rushes  headlong  into  a  diet,  made 
up  by  every  coarse,  rough,  indigestible  and  irrita- 
ting substance  within  his  reach — from  the  seeds 
and  skins  of  the  fruit  and  berries,  to  the  hull  of  the 
grain  and  peelings  of  potatoes  and  tubers.  Similar- 

39 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

ly,  after  an  excessive  diet  on  greasy  soups,  rich 
gravies,  and  life-smothering  pastry,  with  the 
threatening  break-down  of  kidney  and  liver  as  the 
natural  and  inevitable  consequence,  he  may  turn 
around  and  shout  from  the  housetops  a  sweeping 
condemnation  of  every  form  of  meat  diet,  while 
pronouncing  the  vegetarian  diet  as  the  only 
physically,  mentally  and  morally  legitimate  way 
of  conducting  the  business  of  life.  On  the  same 
basis  of  emotional  unbalance,  he  would  urge  the 
disappearance  of  every  ledge  of  rock  salt  from  the 
surface  of  the  earth,  and  de-chemicalize  every 
grain  of  salt  in  the  ocean,  just  because  he  once 
got  the  cartilageous  ball-bearings  of  his  joints  and 
spinal  vertebrae  stiffened  up  by  the  life-long 
vicious  habit  of  three  times  a  day  covering  up  his 
food  with  a  thick  film  of  sodium  chloride.  Yet 
for  each  individual  who  wrecks  his  kidneys  by  an 
excess  of  salt,  there  are  hundreds  and  thousands 
that  lose  their  health  and  rush  into  degeneracy 
from  an  over-indulgence  in  sugar. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  an  excess  of  salt  may 
ultimately  result  disastrously,  especially  to  people 
of  the  lean  and  nervous  type.  But  used  as  a  con- 
diment, and  gauged  by  common  sense,  sodium 
chloride  acts  as  a  basis  for  free  oxygen  to  break 
up  the  muscle  contracting  carbon  deposits  of  the 
system,  and  release  its  stagnant  fluids.  It  is  this 
character  of  being  an  oxydizer  that  gives  to  salt 
its  stimulating  as  well  as  preserving  qualities, 
starting  reactions  of  displacement  through  vapor- 
ization of  old,  dead,  water-soaked  lymph-spaces 
in  the  field  of  absorption — just  as  it  is  the  evapor- 
ating power  of  the  salt  that  sends  the  liquid  masses 
of  the  ocean  up  into  the  blue  ether,  to  recondense, 

40 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

and  in  due  time,  to  precipitate  itself  as  rain.  It 
is  also  this  stimulating  quality  that  gives  to  salt  the 
miraculous  power  of  displacing  over  sixty  per- 
centage of  blood  of  the  human  body,  when  in  acci- 
dents the  individual  may  have  sustained  a  cor- 
responding loss  of  his  circulating  fluids.  It  is  safe 
to  say,  that  in  a  mixed  diet,  the  average  individual 
will  become  sluggish  and  dull  in  the  course  of  a 
protracted  absence  of  salt  in  his  diet.  While  on 
the  other  hand — we  must  not  forget  that  any  per- 
son, who  has  indulged  excessively  in  salt,  and  as 
a  natural  consequence,  feels  symptoms  of  irrita- 
tion and  a  short-circuiting  of  his  muscular  and 
nervous  exchanges,  should  for  a  longer  or  shorter 
time  eliminate  its  use  completely  from  his  diet.* 

The  same  principle  holds  good  with  regard  to 
pepper  and  other  spices  and  condiments.  Like 
salt,  pepper,  by  virtue  of  its  high  percentage  of 
carbon,  is  a  powerful  base  for  oxydation  and  in- 
creases the  responsiveness  of  the  food  stuffs  to  the 
action  of  the  digestive  secretions.  In  the  tropics 
where  the  incessant  heat  reduces  life  to  its  lowest 
level  of  relaxation,  the  oxydizing  power  of  pepper 
is  of  greatest  value  to  digestion  and  assimilation — 


*In  his  report  to  the  British  Geographical  Society,  Dr. 
Livingstone,  the  famous  African  explorer,  mentioned  the 
singular  desire  the  natives  of  the  Congo  had  for  salt.  No 
greater  attraction  could  be  offered  the  children  of  these  na- 
tives than  a  few  crystals  of  ordinary  coarse  cooking  salt. 
Strange  as  it  may  seem,  according  to  Livingstone,  they  even 
preferred  it  to  sugar. 

Another  explorer  of  the  "Dark  Continent,"  Rev.  George 
Kenilworth,  refers  to  the  same  trait  of  the  African  natives. 
In  a  report  to  an  English  Missionary  Society,  he  says: 
"African  boys  and  girls  love  salt  as  our  boys  and  girls  love 
candy.  In  some  portions  of  Africa  salt  takes  the  place  _of 
money.  Missionaries  starting  out  to  their  stations  in  interior 
Africa,  never  fail  to  take  along  with  them  a  goodly  supply  of 
salt,  for  in  some  sections  it  is  of  far  more  value  than  silver 
or  gold." 

41 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

a  fact  which  makes  a  light  use  of  this  condiment 
during  the  hot  season  in  every  zone,  very  impor- 
tant to  the  ordinary  diet.  In  fact  so  powerful  is 
the  salt  and  pepper  as  agencies  of  digestion,  that 
a  piece  of  raw  meat,  thoroughly  kneaded  in  with 
pepper  and  salt,  and  exposed  to  the  open  air  for  a 
period  of  four  hours  to  each  side  of  the  meat,  by 
the  action  of  the  super-induced  oxygen-increase, 
is  transmuted  into  a  palatable  steak  and  more  thor- 
oughly cooked  than  any  French  chef,  of  the  most 
exalted  kitchendom,  could  ever  accomplish.  Nature 
has  a  meaning  and  purpose  with  her  various  prod- 
ucts. There  are  no  air-tight,  or  water-tight  compart- 
ments in  the  domain  of  nature  :  everywhere — includ- 
ing the  very  mineral — we  find  the  play  of  reciprocity, 
of  inter-dependence  in  relationship,  and  solidarity  in 
mutual  assistance.  But  extremes,  excesses  and  vio- 
lations of  law  must  be  unconditionally  avoided. 
Plato  was  right  when  as  the  guiding  rule  for  the  stu- 
dents of  his  "Academia"  he  wrote  the  motto: 
moderation  in  all.  The  balance  and  poise  of  life  is 
not  maintained  in  the  back-to-nature  phrase,  "all 
or  nothing,"  but  in  the  knowledge,  judgment,  ap- 
preciation and  self-control  of  a  well-ordered,  self- 
restrained  life. 


VII 


SALT  AS  A  CURE  FOR  CANCER  AND  TUBERCU- 
LOSIS 

IN  our  ignorance  about  the  deeper  facts  of  life, 
we  constantly  overlook  the  most  wonderful 
opportunities  offered  by  nature  in  terms  of 
remedies  constructive  to  life.  Thus  in  denouncing 
our  common  salt — sodium  chloride — as  an  unqual- 
ified deadly  poison,  to  be  shunned  as  an  implacable 
enemy  to  man,  many  of  our  food  reformers  keep 
the  public  prejudiced  against  one  of  nature's 
grandest  agencies,  which,  when  understood  in  its 
deeper  influence  upon  organic  structures,  will  be 
of  greatest  value  to  suffering  mankind.  It  is 
especially  in  its  quality  as  an  oxydizing  agent 
that  salt  manifests  its  startling  powers  as  a  cell 
restorative. 

It  is  a  simple  fact,  known  to  every  peasant 
as  well  as  to  every  scientist,  that  salt  has  the 
power  to  preserve  animal  tissues  from  decom- 
position. But  the  basis  for  this  elemental  power 
is  not  generally  recognized,  as  it  calls  for  a  knowl- 
edge of  organic  and  inorganic  chemistry  in  rela- 
tion to  life,  which  few  take  the  trouble  to  acquire. 
In  referring  to  men  of  strong  character  as  "the 
salt  of  the  earth"  we  unconsciously  certify  to  this 
fundamental  value  of  salt  to  the  extent  that  char- 
acter exerts  the  same  preserving,  steadying  in- 
fluence upon  the  mind,  as  salt  upon  the  meat.  In 
either  case  there  is  introduced  a  rate  of  vibration 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

into  the  involved  structures  that  render  them  im- 
mune to  the  attack  of  hostile  forces. 

"Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth."  When  spoken 
by  the  master  to  his  disciples,  these  words  carried 
a  significance  far  beyond  the  scope  of  mere  oratori- 
cal phrasing.  It  meant  that  as  salt  protects  the  flesh 
from  physical  corruption,  so  the  soul,  when  rooted 
in  righteousness  and  virtue,  protects  the  mind  from 
moral  corruption.  Thus,  character  may  be  said  to 
be  crystalized  virtue — a  fixed,  standardized,  un- 
shakable and  indissoluble  moral  virility,  which  by 
precept  or  example,  by  mental  attitude  or  living 
action,  may  throw  a  zone  of  protection  around 
other  minds,  less  strong  in  their  power  of  resist- 
ence  to  forces  of  corruption. 

Now,  in  applying  salt  as  a  remedy  for  the  treat- 
ment of  consumption,  it  must  be  recognized  that 
consumption  is  a  disease  of  structural  degener- 
acy— a  decomposition  of  tissues,  and  that  the  ap- 
pearance of  bacillus  tuberculosis  in  the  pathologi- 
cal field  goes  to  prove  that  the  stage  of  corruption, 
with  its  output  of  festering  tissues,  has  passed  be- 
yond the  scope  of  native  constitutional  power  to 
remove  from  the  system.  Hence,  so  far  from  be- 
ing enemies  to  the  individual,  the  bacilli  tubercu- 
losis are  in  reality  his  assistants,  performing  the 
duties  of  physiological  house-cleaning:  removing 
from  his  lungs  the  broken  down,  decomposing  cell- 
wrecks  that  otherwise  would  have  caused  the  in- 
dividual to  choke  in  his  own  excretions.  In  other 
words,  his  microbes  operate  on  the  same  basis 
of  service  and  usefulness  as  the  scavenger  birds — 
from  the  fly  to  the  buzzard — in  cleaning  up  his 
kitchen  or  backyard.  Nature  abhors  decomposi- 
tion and  corruption,  and  the  moment  organized 


44 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

tissues  break  down — either  within  us  or  without 
us;  either  in  the  lungs  of  our  chest,  or  in  the  car- 
cass of  our  backyard — that  great  supervisor  of 
universal  sanitation  sends  her  running,  crawling, 
wriggling,  swimming  or  flying  hosts  of  scavengers 
to  remove  the  cause  of  corruption  from  her  do- 
main. 

Now  the  same  function  which  the  maggots  and 
microbes  perform  in  the  field  of  organized  life,  the 
mineral  salts  bring  about  in  the  inanimate  field 
of  rocks  and  metals.  We  see  the  action  of  these 
silent,  elemental  scavengers  in  the  metallic  oxyda- 
tion  known  as  rust,  which  in  every  aspect  and  pur- 
pose corresponds  to  the  process  of  the  organized 
destruction  known  as  tuberculosis.  In  either  case 
we  recognize  the  act  of  expediency  involved  by 
nature  in  her  efforts  to  arrest  the  degeneracy,  men- 
acing to  other  forms  of  existence. 

The  power  of  ordinary  salt  to  protect  nature 
from  premature  degeneracy  is  readily  seen  in  the 
preservative  action  of  salt — sodium  chloride— 
upon  meat,  which,  when  saturated  by  the  solution 
of  this  agent,  may  withstand  decomposition  for 
years — a  process  which  has  its  sole  explanation  in 
the  singular  paradox  that  the  power  of  salt  to  act 
upon  objects  has  its  basis  in  the  very  absence  of 
any  constructive  power  in  the  salt  itself. 

For  salt  is  simply  a  "mineral  ash"  produced  by 
the  smokeless  and  fireless  combustion  of  other  ele- 
ments. When  by  some  reason  or  other  an  element 
starts  a  war  upon  itself,  within  its  own  domain, 
its  component  parts  become  subject  to  the  disin- 
tegrating action  of  disbanded  forces,  which  in  their 
very  release  break  down  and  dissipate  as  in- 
dependent structures,  to  become  absorbed  into 


45 


NEW    LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

stronger  elemental  associations.  And  the  dis- 
tinguishing process  which  Always  attends  disinte- 
gration, is  the  presence  of  oxygen — the  supreme 
executioner  of  elemental  disloyality,  which  in 
terms  of  vitiation,  corrosions  or  rust,  removes  from 
the  highways  of  evolution  the  wrecks  that  failed 
to  respond  to  the  creative,  constructive  and  sus- 
taining principle  of  universal  life.  And  the  waste 
product,  the  ash  or  sediment,  formed  in  and  by 
every  process  of  combustion,  from  the  burning  up 
of  a  piece  of  paper  to  the  "rust"  of  an  iron  bar,  is 
the  substance  we  call  salt. 

Being  thus  a  mere  ash  from  which  every  self- 
sustained  form  or  expression  of  constructive 
energy  is  removed,  salt  becomes  a  vital  vacuum, 
ever  ready  to  absorb  into  its  elemental  void  every 
process  of  excessive  vitality  within  the  reach  of 
its  influence.  And  it  is  this  unsatisfied  hunger  for 
its  lost  chemical  affinities  that  gives  to  salt  the 
quality  to  absorb  and  unite  to  itself  that  particular 
life  or  energy  which,  through  some  pathological 
influence,  has  become  disturbed  in  its  normal  re- 
lationship to  its  organization — in  other  wrords : 
forms  of  decomposition. 

The  rationale  of  the  eliminative  action  exerted 
by  salt  upon  tissues  of  corruption,  is  thus  readily 
seen.  It  is  at  once  an  act  of  prevention  and  res- 
toration, of  destruction  and  construction.  The 
decomposing  tissues  of  the  organism,  being  re- 
lieved of  their  infection,  find  a  ready  opportunity 
to  reestablish  normal  relationship  to  organized 
form,  and  the  resulting  reciprocity  of  orderly, 
creative  life  impulses. 

The  method  by  which  this  elemental  action  of 
salt  can  be  most  practically  utilized,  in  the  treat- 

46 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

ment  of  tuburculosis  consists  of  a  two-fold  applica- 
tion: internal  and  external.  In  the  first  case,  to  a 
pint  of  saline  saturated  solution  should  be  added  a 
tablespoon  of  pure  alcohol,  and  out  of  this  mix- 
ture the  tuberculosis  patient  should  take  a  tea- 
spoonful  morning  and  evening,  twenty  minutes  be- 
fore the  meal,  and  diluted  with  half  a  cup  of  hot 
water.  The  water  of  the  solution  should  be  dis- 
tilled and  thoroughly  boiled  before  using. 

The  external  application  consists  of  a  daily 
warm  bath,  made  up  by  a  solution  of  one  meas- 
ure of  salt  to  thirty  measures  of  water — and  in 
which  the  patient  should  be  immersed  while 
gently  massaged,  during  some  fifteen  or  twenty 
minutes.  The  bath,  if  convenient,  should  be  taken 
in  the  evening  and  followed  by  a  crisp  rub  with 
a  towel  wrung  out  in  cold  water.  While  in  the 
bath,  the  action  of  the  solution  can  be  greatly  in- 
creased by  gently  rubbing  a  handful  of  salt  over 
the  chest  and  back  of  the  patient,  allowing  the 
salt  to  melt  on  the  skin,  as  it  is  in  the  very  melting 
process  that  the  salt  exhibits  its  greatest  powers 
of  oxydation.  Every  morning  upon  leaving  his 
bed,  the  patient  should  be  rubbed  all  over  his 
body  with  a  "pickled  towel" — by  which  is  meant 
a  towel  soaked  in  saturated  salt  solution,  and  then 
allowed  to  dry  in  the  sun.  The  rub  should  include 
the  foot  soles,  and  the  spaces  between  the  toes,  as 
the  latter  are  great  centers  of  nerve  action.  It  is 
also  to  be  observed  that  the  rubbing  should  take 
place  before  an  open  window. 

In  the  case  of  external  cancer,  the  patient 
should  increase  the  percentage  of  the  salt  in  the 
bath  to  a  point  approaching  saturation.  The  salt 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

should  be  allowed  to  melt  on  the  affected  places, 
and  if  in  the  throat,  a  gargle  of  saturated  solution 
should  frequently  be  used,  while  the  outside  of 
the  neck  is  soaked  with  strongest  brine.  The  bath 
should  last  fifteen  minutes,  and  repeated  morning 
and  evening:  three  hours  after  breakfast  and  the 
same  time  after  supper.  Should  the  cancer  be 
abdominal,  compresses  of  hot  brine  should  be  ap- 
plied over  the  surface  under  which  the  cancer  is 
located.  Stomach,  intestines,  bowels,  ovaries,  uter- 
us, or  any  other  seat  of  the  attack  may  thus  be 
reached  by  external  application,  covering  the  ana- 
tomical zones  in  which  these  organs  are  located. 
As  an  adjuvant  to  this  salt  cure,  should  be  added 
a  diet  absolutely  free  from  grease  and  animal  fats, 
such  as  cream,  yolk  of  egg,  butter,  cheese,  gra- 
vies, soups,  pastry;  condiments  such  as  peppers, 
mustard,  sugar,  vinegar,  coffee,  chocolate,  cocoa, 
ice-cream  soda  and  any  form  of  beverage  other 
than  pure  water  and  milk.  Salt,  being  an  irritant 
to  internal  tissues,  should  also  be  removed  from 
the  diet.  The  food  should  consist  of  bland,  non- 
irritating  substances,  such  as  vegetables,  barley, 
onion,  garlic-puree,  whole  wheat  (not  the  irritat- 
ing bran  or  graham),  Japanese  brown  small  rice, 
Salisbury  steak,  (upper  cut  of  a  round  steak), 
seered  on  a  plate  ;  fish — baked  or  steamed — never 
fried  or  boiled — and  only  once  or  twice  a  week, 
baked  Irish  potatoes,  fresh  leafy,  green  vegetables, 
turned  into  salads,  but  no  dressing  save  oil;  string 
beans,  parsley,  spinach,  onions,  carrots,  celery, 
cabbage,  either  in  cooked  or  raw  form;  Italian 
macaroni  with  onions,  artichoke,  celery  root.  For 
specialized  "bill  of  fares"  see  my  book  "Facts 
and  Fancies  in  Health  Foods."  Fruits  should  not 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

be  taken  in  connection  with  meals.  No  tomatoes 
or  grape  fruits;  but  one  hour  before  breakfast — 
twice  a  week — a  glass  of  sodium  citrate  may  be 
enjoyed.  The  citrate  is  made  up  of  the  juice  of 
half  a  lemon  and  one-half  teaspoonful  of  Epsom 
Salts,  mixed  in  a  glass  of  distilled  water.  Flax- 
seed  tea  with  a  sprinkling  of  salt  makes  a  good 
substitute  for  tea  or  coffee.  A  teaspoonful  of  pure 
olive  oil  should  be  taken  before  each  meal.  At 
night  three  hours  after  the  last  meal,  the  patient 
may  enjoy  a  fresh,  sweet  apple.  Deep,  full  breath- 
ing, in  the  open  air,  and  daily  walks  are  absolutely 
essential  for  the  patient. 


VIII 
THE  GREAT  FRUIT  INDISCRIMINATION 

A  T  the  Gateway  of  every  Eden,"  said  Mo- 
Z\  hammed,  "hangs  a  two-edged  sword." 
•*•  -^-It  is  the  sword  of  moral  decision  by  the 
individual  when  he  faces  the  issues  of  pleasure 
or  duty,  and  brought  to  make  the  choice  between 
them  both.  At  every  step  of  life  we  are  brought 
up  against  the  situation  of  the  ancient  Hercules, 
who,  symbolizing  the  destiny  of  the  heroic  soul, 
found  himself  before  the  parting  of  the  roads 
under  the  stress  of  inevitable  choice.  This  symbol- 
ism stands  as  the  eternal  recurrence  in  every  in- 
dulgence of  an  individual's  life.  Especially  at 
present  does  this  situation  meet  us  in  regard  to 
food.  Never  before  has  mankind  been  tempted 
with  more  variety  of  foods  and  with  more  appeals 
to  his  appetite  than  at  present.  New  forms  and 
combinations,  with  new  methods  of  treatment  of 
the  different  foodstuffs  are  continually  introduced 
by  a  perverted  kitchendom  to  a  sensation-loving 
public,  coupled  with  a  constantly  increasing  yield 
by  nature  herself  in  response  to  the  ingenuity  and 
genius  of  men  who  have  learned  how  to  bring  out 
new  departures  of  biologic  life  in  terms  of  grains, 
fruits  and  vegetables.  And  to  give  added  pressure 
to  the  temptation,  there  seems  to  be  a  growing  con- 
viction in  the  individual  that  the  object  of  evolu- 
tion is  merely  to  cater  to  the  human  appetite,  re- 
solving every  presentation  of  beauty,  fragrance, 


50 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

harmony  in  the  great  ensemble  of  nature  life,  into 
thrills  of  taste,  smell  and  raphsody. 

No  greater  danger  lies  before  the  individual 
than  to  convert  the  function  of  eating  from  a 
means  to  an  end,  from  sustenance  to  indulgence. 
For  any  form  of  food,  even  the  purest  and  most 
beneficient,  if  indulged  in  without  discrimination, 
for  pleasure  in  place  of  service,  for  gratification 
of  appetite  in  place  of  aiming  at  better  health  and 
usefulness — becomes  a  deadly  poison  in  the  sys- 
tem. And  this  fact  receives  an  added  significance 
in  the  further  fact  that  the  finer  the  type  of  the 
foods,  as  for  instance,  the  fruits,  the  greater  danger 
lies  in  its  misuse  or  abuse.  For  the  sweetness  and 
acids  combined  in  the  fruits,  owing  to  the  swift- 
ness in  their  rate  of  vibration,  possess  a  keeness  of 
vital  electric  polarity,  which  may  strike  into  the 
processes  of  human  digestion  as  a  bolt  of  light- 
ning into  a  heap  of  conductive  metals. 

Fruit  occupies  a  position  in  the  realm  of  food- 
stuffs all  its  own.  In  a  way  we  may  call  fruit  an 
after  thought  of  evolution — the  ornamental  and 
finishing  refinement  due  to  the  more  advanced 
types  of  life.  For  while  the  great  staple  forms  of 
foods:  the  albuminous,  carbonacious,  mineral, 
starchy,  alkaline,  saline  elements  of  the  human 
nutrition,  grow  on,  in,  or  upon  the  earth — as  shown 
in  the  tubers,  grains,  pulses  and  vegetables — the 
fruit  has  its  birth  and  evolution  in  the  mid-air, 
under  the  confluent  support  of  sun  and  air,  elec- 
tricity, ozone  and  vital  energy.  Hence  while  the 
former  group  is  a  representative  of  the  earth,  and 
instrumental  in  building  and  maintaining  the  body 
structures — the  mechanics  of  the  organism,  so  to 
speak — the  latter  is  of  the  blue  ether,  a  fairy 

51 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

fabric  of  light  and  ozone,  and  equipped  with 
power  to  expurge  and  remove  the  waste  products 
of  the  physiological  industry;  absorb  its  acids, 
neutralize  its  surplus  of  fats,  and  dissolve  its 
mineral  deposits,  while  suffusing  a  purifying  and 
regenerating  influence  over  every  cell,  or  group 
of  cells  of  the  organism.  In  other  words,  as  the 
earth-bound  foods  give  an  onward  or  forward 
movement  to  the  physical  organism,  the  electro- 
carbo-hydrates — the  fruits — move  in  an  upward 
direction,  supplying  the  body  with  an  elasticity  of 
tissues,  suppleness  of  movement  and  freedom  of 
poise  that,  if  not  interfered  with,  would  insure  the 
individual  at  least  a  century  of  physical  health, 
mental  vigor  and  altruistic  energy.  " 

So  far  so  good.  But  the  condition  for  the  bio- 
logic success  of  the  scheme  hinges  on  a  thorough 
realization  of  the  scope  of  indulgence  which  can 
be  safely  extended  to  any  one  individual  with  a 
view  to  his  particular  constitutional  needs  of  fruit. 
Fruit,  being  electric  to  its  quality,  has  an  alto- 
gether different  effect  on  the  nervous,  highly  or- 
ganized individual,  than  on  the  sluggish  or  poised 
and  easy-going.  For  the  former  expresses  the 
electric  type,  and  is  consequently  in  and  by  him- 
self generating  the  high  momentum  of  energy  in 
his  nervous  and  circulatory  system  of  which  the 
fruit  is  the  biological  carrier  and  transmitter; 
while  the  latter  type,  being  magnetic  or  neutral, 
is  in  constant  need  of  external  electric  impulse  to 
keep  his  cell-world  from  an  ever-threatening  stag- 
nancy. Nervousness  means  mental  friction,  and 
out  of  friction  we  get  heat,  fire  or  electricity, 
corresponding  to  the  nature  of  the  substances  or 
elements  in  which  the  friction  takes  place.  And 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

as  acids  are  animated  or  vitalized  electricity 
passed  into  states  of  condensation  and  liquidation, 
it  is  only  a  matter  of  scientific  logic  that  nervous- 
ness should  be  accompanied  by  acid  stomach,  or 
that  progressive  acidity  in  the  blood  and  muscle, 
which  manifests  in  rheumatism,  neuralgia  and 
neurites. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  same  scientific  logic 
which  warns  against  the  indulgence  of  acid  fruits 
by  the  nervous,  finds  this  very  indulgence  a  physio- 
logic necessity  for  the  neutral  or  sluggish  type, 
which,  when  over  nourished  on  fat  or  greasy  food- 
stuffs may  even  require  the  metabolic  jolt  of 
pickles,  vinegar  and  sour  milk  for  the  maintenance 
of  an  acid  balance.  Here,  if  ever,  is  seen  the 
truth  of  the  old  wise  saying,  that  one  man's  food 
is  another  man's  poison. 

Under  any  circumstance,  however,  fruit  should 
be  taken  alone,  separated  by  at  least  three  hours 
from  any  other  form  of  food.  Explosive  to  its 
nature,  with  its  field  of  digestion  in  the  intestines 
in  place  of  the  stomach,  and  consequently  with  no 
need  or  demand  for  the  salivary  or  gastric  secre- 
tions, the  fruit  requires  a  digestive  field  all  its 
own  and  is  absolutely  incompatible  with  any  other 
foodstuffs.  For  the  acidity  of  the  fruit  closes  the 
ducts,  both  of  the  salivary  and  gastric  secretions, 
while  the  starch  of  the  cereal  and  the  proteid  of 
the  meat  demand  imperatively  the  unhampered 
flow  of  these  very  secretions — a  situation  which 
seriously  handicaps  the  digestion  all  along  its  ali- 
mentary career.  Hence  no  greater  mistake  in  diet 
was  ever  made  than  to  start  a  breakfast  with  grape 
fruit,  and  follow  it  up  with  some  kind  of  cereal, 
hot  rolls  or  biscuits,  etc.,  and  perhaps  a  glass  of 

55 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

milk  as  a  table  beverage.  Only  the  most  strenuous 
effort  of  the  nerves  of  the  different  secretions  can 
overcome  this  maltreatment  and  subsequent  dead- 
lock of  the  glandular  agencies,  which  often  have 
to  be  assisted  by  vital,  constitutional,  reserve 
forces.  The  situation  is  practically  that  of  an  en- 
gine spending  its  energy  against  the  resistance  of 
its  turned  down  breaks — a  menace  which  in  the 
case  of  human  nutrition  involves  a  prodigious 
waste  of  vital  forces,  drawn  from  physiological 
reservoirs  which  are  set  aside  for  future  old  age 
when  the  system  ceases  to  be  biologically  self- 
sustaining. 

It  may  appear  an  extreme  assertion  to  say,  that 
fruit,  notwithstanding  its  high  biologic  value  to 
progressive  life,  because  of  its  abuse,  has  done 
more  harm  than  good  to  mankind.  Not  realizing 
the  individualities  involved  in  the  different  fruits 
— their  varying  degree  of  acidity  and  subsequent 
vibratory  intensity — we  indulge  in  fruit-salads 
where  each  ingredience  often  works  in  jarring 
conflict  with  every  other,  and  the  digestive  labors 
resemble  a  debating  society  where  each  speaker 
uses  a  vernacular  of  his  own,  unintelligible  to  the 
rest.  The  adjustment  of  the  situation  must  again 
be  sought  in  the  call  upon  constiutional  reserves 
with  the  recurrent  and  inevitable  loss  of  vital 
power.  Truly,  John  Ruskin  was  right:  we  realize 
what  we  suffer,  but  not  what  we  lose  in  our  cam- 
paign with  the  incidents  of  life. 

The  sour  or  sweet  dressing  which  usually  graces 
or  greases  the  salads  adds  injury  to  the  insult,  as 
far  as  the  digestibility  of  the  mass  is  concerned. 
And  while  these  offenses  against  the  laws  of  phys- 
iologic life  may  or  may  not  be  laid  at  the  door 

S4 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

of  gluttony,  yet  the  indulgence  is  too  serious  to  be 
allowed  to  pass  unmentioned.  The  bizarre  con- 
coction made  up  by  oil  or  melted  butter,  sour 
cream,  lemon  juice — often  vinegar  and  sugar, 
whipped  into  an  indigestible  emulsion,  may  well 
deserve  the  name  of  wolves  in  sheep's  clothing 
where  each  ingredience  makes  its  savage  attack 
on  the  peaceful  labors  of  the  normally  engaged 
digestive  functionaries. 

This  rule  against  fruit  mixtures  either  with 
different  kinds  of  fruits  themselves,  or  with  other 
kinds  of  foods,  allows  of  no  exception,  though  it 
has  been  found  that  in  some  cases  the  combination 
of  fruit  with  a  pint  of  milk,  or  with  a  few  pecans 
has  proved  a  tolerable  dietetic  success.  In  fact,  in 
some  cases  of  nervous  indigestion  it  is  only  in  com- 
bination with  milk  that  fruit  can  be  enjoyed  at  all. 

On  the  other  hand  it  is  of  vital  importance  for 
every  person  to  distinctly  realize  that  the  great, 
constantly  increasing  avalanche  of  fruit-made 
breads  and  cereals,  such  as  raisin-bread,  prune- 
bread,  fig-bread,  banana-bread,  fruit  in  coffee  sub- 
stitutes, etc.,  are  all  violations  of  biologic-chemical 
laws,  whose  only  excuse  is  that  of  stimulating  the 
stomach  to  efforts  of  ingestion  and  digestion  be- 
yond its  normal  needs  and  capacities.  The  rule 
is  irrevocable :  what  nature  has  united  shall  men 
not  separate,  and  vice  versa.  The  alarming  in- 
crease of  dyspepsia,  colitis,  gastric  ulcers,  cancers, 
catarrh,  tumors,  appendicitis,  typhoid,  pneumonia, 
and  occasionally  some  new  species  of  disease,  ar- 
riving in  response  to  some  new  form  of  food  poison- 
ing— are  indisputable  evidences  of  the  fatal  pres- 
ence of  an  "enemy  within  our  own  household," 


55 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

that  feasts  and  festers  upon  our  perverted  appe- 
tites, turning  our  foods  into  poisons  and  gradually 
foreshortening  our  vital  perspectives.  The  con- 
tinuous struggle  between  the  supremacy  or  sub- 
ordinacy  of  the  conflicting  food  mixtures  sooner 
or  later  wears  out  the  system,  and  in  spite  of  the 
splendid  inheritance  we  may  have  received  of  an- 
cestral vitality,  the  present  generation  shows  grim 
evidence  of  approaching  disaster  both  in  the  in- 
creasing frequency  of  old  diseases  and  in  the  oc- 
casional appearance  of  some  new,  inexperienced 
and  undefinable  type  of  startling  morbidity. 

The  individual  must  learn,  whether  roaming  in 
the  woods  or  moving  in  the  lime  light  of  high 
graded  society,  that  to  interefere  with  vital  prin- 
ciples is  freighted  with  danger.  And  though  he 
may  succeed  in  a  temporary  escape  from  the  con- 
sequences of  the  transgression,  the  fact  remains 
one  of  the  sternest  in  the  whole  realm  of  human 
dietetics,  that  any  separation,  extraction  or  sub- 
traction of  nature's  organized  life  in  the  form  of 
grains,  milk,  meat,  fruit;  any  sifting,  extracting, 
diluting  or  concentrating  process,  bringing  about 
a  discord  in  the  molecular  or  atomic  arrangement 
of  cell-structures,  or  disturbing  the  mechanical, 
chemical,  dynamic  or  vital  balance  of  her  life-bear- 
ing compounds — reacts  on  the  entire  physical  and 
mental  value  of  the  foodstuff.  The  individual  must 
be  made  to  realize  that  he  can  add  nothing  to  the 
grain,  save  heat  and  water,  that  can  improve  upon 
its  vital  value,  and  that  the  bran,  or  fruit,  or  short- 
ening added  to  the  flour,  means  disturbance  of 
vital  poise  and  the  irreparable  loss  to  the  construc- 
tive powers  of  the  grain.  For  evolution  during  un- 
told biologic  ages  weighed  and  measured  the 


55 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

value  of  her  vital  compounds,  until  she  finally  ar- 
rived at  the  present  perfectibility  of  her  life-bear- 
ing processes. 

Man  must  learn  to  keep  hands  off  nature's  vital 
handiwork  until  he  enlists  himself  as  a  faithful 
laborer  in  the  vinyard  of  the  Lord — the  domain  of 
organized  life.  He  must  first  learn  to  spell  na- 
ture's alphabet,  and  strive  to  attain  to  a  knowl- 
edge of  her  aims  and  purposes  before  he  may 
venture  to  interfere  with  her  processes.  So  im- 
portant is  this  rule  that  his  fidelity  to  it  determines 
the  fulness,  power  and  integrity  of  his  entire  evolu- 
tionary career. 


57 


IX 
THE  PROBLEM  OF  QUANTITY  IN  FEEDING 

IN  the  entire  realm  of  diet  there  is  perhaps  no 
question  more  embarrassing  to  the  individual 
than  the  amount  of  food  required  to  cover  the 
vital  expenditure  involved  in  his  daily  existence. 
In  fact  so  complex  is  the  question  of  human  nutri- 
tion in  relation  to  the  real  need  of  the  system,  that 
any  attempt  to  arrive  at  a  satisfactory  solution  on 
a  purely  technical,  physiological  basis,  in  terms 
of  food-grams  and  calories,  must  necessarily  fail. 
The  question  is  at  once  the  most  vital  and  most 
subtle  of  the  entire  system  of  diet,  and  involves 
for  its  true  solution,  a  co-operation  of  the  entire 
individuality  of  man  with  all  the  forces  and  cate- 
gories that  go  to  make  up  his  moral  and  ethical 
nature. 

Above  all,  this  question  makes  a  call  for  self- 
control.  When  feeding  his  body,  the  individual 
comes  under  the  influence  of  forces  which  spring 
from  the  plane  of  instinct,  and  may  often  be  strong 
enough  to  sway  his  judgment  from  its  high  level  of 
calm  intelligence,  to  that  of  an  unreasoned  and  un- 
governable sense  of  appetite.  Hence,  for  a  com- 
prehension of  the  individual's  attitude  to  life  in 
general,  we  must  realize  him  as  placed  under  the 
strain  of  two  distinct,  opposing  forces ;  that  of  in- 
stinct and  that  of  reason,  of  emotion  and  of  judg- 
ment, of  sensuous  promptings  and  of  moral  self- 
control.  And  so  completely  independent  of  each 
others  motives  are  these  forces,  that  they  move 
55 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

along  lines  of  diametrically  opposite  direction 
followed  by  friction  and  conflict  whenever  they 
come  in  active  contact. 

The  one  set  of  these  forces  expresses  the  instinc- 
tual-animal nature  of  the  individual.  The  other 
his  self-consciously  moral.  The  one  is  in  the  hand 
of  automatic  desire,  the  other  of  reasoned  intelli- 
gence and  self-directed  will.  Now  in  ordinary 
animal  existence  where  the  instinct  is  primitive  and 
pure,  and  still  unhampered  by  psychological  crav- 
ings, the  sense  of  appetite  forms  part  of  a  system 
which,  on  the  basis  of  an  automatically  regulated 
relation  between  the  physiological  demand  and 
supply  of  the  animal,  renders  its  struggle  for  ex- 
istence perfectly  safe.  But  when,  as  in  the  intellec- 
tualized  and  reason-endowed  human  individual, 
the  influence  of  psychology  has  displaced  that  of 
physiology,  and  pure  instinct,  with  its  true,  nat- 
ural sensation  of  hunger,  given  way  to  the  irri- 
tated and  artificially  aggravated  sense  of  appetite, 
detached  from  its  guiding  instinct,  and  governed 
solely  by  its  over-stimulated  desire  to  indulge — 
the  act  of  eating  becomes  a  bacchanal  with  its 
sole  check  in  the  physical  incapacity  of  the  system 
to  further  engage.  And  as  appetite  and  cravings 
mostly  are  false  psychological  impressions,  formed 
in  the  mind  and  flashed  upon  the  automatic  records 
of  the  medulla,  it  is  readily  seen  that  to  be  guaged 
by  these  impulses  means  to  juggle  with  life,  and 
to  install  future  or  immediate  disaster  to  the  sys- 
tem. For  desire  is  like  fire — it  feeds  upon  any- 
thing thrown  in  its  way,  with  its  demands  increas- 
ing in  fury  until  reaching  the  fatal  point  of  in- 
capacity to  further  indulge,  when  under  the  st^- 
gering  load  of  increasing  nutritional  excels,  tv^ 


NE1F  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

physiological  receivers  become  clogged  to  suffoca- 
tion and  the  vital  engine,  with  its  intricate  meta- 
bolic involvement  of  secretions  and  circulation  trem- 
bles on  the  verge  of  bursting. 

To  obtain  self-control  in  eating,  it  is  of  the  great- 
est importance  to  know  the  difference  between 
hunger  and  appetite.  Thus  while  hunger  is  a 
natural  stimulation  of  the  secretory  nerves,  arising 
from  positive  vital  needs  of  the  system,  sensation 
of  appetite  is  a  mere  irritation,  independent  of  any 
corresponding  physiologic  necessity,  but  solely 
due  to  the  influence  of  the  secretory  nerves  of 
mental  and  psychic  representations.  To  allow  the 
mind,  during  business  hours,  to  dwell  upon  food, 
with  all  the  imagery  of  tempting  viands,  psychol- 
ogizes the  gastric  nerves,  and  through  them  im- 
pose— upon  the  medulla  oblongata — the  central  office 
of  the  vital-physiologic  exchanges —  a  false  image 
of  hunger,  with  no  basis  in  real  nutritional  needs 
of  the  system.  And  as  nature  in  all  her  workings 
operates  on  a  basis  of  elasticity  and  yields  to  recur- 
ing  stresses,  the  one  indulgence  paves  the  way  to 
another,  until  the  overcharged  organ  becomes 
chronically  discentralized  and  forced  out  of  rela- 
tion to  the  nutritional  demand-and-supply-balances 
of  normal  life. 

Having  thus  been  derailed  into  an  altogether 
pathological  order  of  functioning,  the  digestive 
system  may  make  demands,  and  force  issues  out 
of  all  relation  to  normal  physiological  standards; 
and  indulgence  of  food,  based  upon  these  repre- 
sentations, must  be  irreliable  and  dangerous  to  the 
system  itself.  Hence,  to  regain  normal  relation- 
ship between  physiological  demand  and  supply, 
the  individual  must  ignore  his  cravings  and  sen- 

60 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

sations  of  unsatisfied  appetite,  and  recognize  the 
promptings  of  reasoning  intelligence  and  calm 
judgment  as  the  determining  factors  in  the  meas- 
urement of  his  food  allowance.  And  having  at- 
tained this  power  of  judgment,  the  next  step 
should  be  to  enforce  it  by  the  mandate  of  self- 
control,  and  subsequent  readjustment  of  the  gas- 
tric secretion  into  a  normal  relationship  to  sys- 
temic requirements.  The  whole  question  of  quanti- 
tative feeding  can  thus  be  resolved  to  a  question 
of  morals,  to  be  dealt  with  sucessfully  only  on  a 
basis  of  moral  integrity,  reasoning  intelligence, 
and  self-control. 

It  has  great  practical  value  as  an  aid  to  this 
development  to  study  the  lives  of  other  people 
whose  frugality  in  matters  of  food  have  in  no  way 
lessened  their  health  and  usefulness.  In  fact 
from  the  time  of  the  later  Romans  up  to  the 
present,  there  is  an  unmistakable  relationship 
between  a  peoples'  health,  intelligence  and  power, 
and  their  degree  of  self-restraint  in  matters  of 
food.  It  is  almost  incredible  as  to  the  small 
amount  upon  which  human  life  can  be  sustained 
and  yet  retain  its  full  vigor  and  usefulness.  It  was 
Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes — himself  a  doctor  of 
medicine — who  once  made  the  statement  that  we 
never  have  any  need  of  regretting  that  we  eat  too 
little.  Another  great  man,  Benjamin  Franklin, 
makes  mention  in  his  autobiography  of  an  interest- 
ing experience  in  his  early  years  when  he  worked 
his  way  through  life  as  a  printer.  One  day  when 
particularly  rushed  for  time,  he  was  compelled  to 
give  up  his  lunch  and  remain  in  his  office  to  the 
end  of  the  day.  When  evening  came,  he  was  sur- 
prised at  the  sound,  healthy  feeling  of  his  head  in 

61 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

which  he  had  suffered  a  dull  ache  since  the  early 
part  of  the  day.  To  this  advantage  was  added 
another — that  of  economy — which,  to  this  father 
of  thrift,  was  of  great  importance.  And  so  Ben 
Franklin,  from  that  very  day,  decided  that  if  the 
elimination  of  a  meal  from  his  daily  dietary  meant 
a  saving  to  him  in  health,  money  and  time,  he 
would  run  his  business  without  a  lunch. 

It  is  generally  well  known  that  Mr.  Thomas 
Edison,  notwithstanding  his  enormous  activity,  is 
a  remarkably  small  eater,  and  often  works  an 
entire  day  without  indulging  in  a  single  meal.  And 
yet  the  health  and  endurance  of  this  man  is  phe- 
nomenal. While  advancing  on  his  eightieth  anni- 
versary he  is  yet  in  possession  of  all  the  vigor  and 
virility  of  youth. 

In  Chauncey  M.  Depew  we  have  another  living 
example  of  what  can  be  attained  and  retained  in 
health  and  power  on  a  very  diminutive  diet.  On 
a  daily  allowance  of  food  which  to  most  people 
would  look  like  starvation,  this  man,  who  has  al- 
ready passed  his  "eighties,"  is  in  possession  of  a 
mind  and  body  as  active  and  regenerative  as  in  his 
prime  of  life.  In  this  connection  may  be  mentioned 
the  curious  story  told  of  M.  Agricola,  the  nephew 
of  Cicero,  who,  after  having  for  years  been  suffer- 
ing from  a  very  severe  dyspepsia,  decided  to  take 
a  deadly  revenge  on  his  arch  enemy — the  stomach 
—by  starving  it  to  death — a  procedure  which,  at 
the  same  time,  would  terminate  his  own  suffer- 
ings. After  a  rigid  abstenance  from  food  for  a 
few  days,  M.  Agricola  found  to  his  wonder  and 
delight,  that  his  sufferings  had  left  him,  and  life 
smiled  upon  him  as  of  former  days.  The  fasting, 
which  had  given  his  stomach  an  opportunity  to 


62 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

restore  its  broken  down  cell-structures  and  im- 
peded secretions,  in  place  of  killing  his  "enemy," 
turned  him  into  his  closest  friend. 

Similar  records  of  long  lives  from  short  meals 
come  to  us  from  the  histories  of  many  great  men. 
Swedenborg,  Goethe,  Herbert  Spencer,  William 
Gladstone  and  John  Burroughs  are  the  names  of 
a  few  men  who  were  noted  for  their  frugal  living, 
but  whose  minds  were  great  and  of  undying  value 
to  their  race.  In  fact  it  may  almost  be  held  as  an 
historical  fact,  that  the  men  who  have  made  the 
greatest  marks  in  this  world  have  been  the  small- 
est eaters. 

As  a  further  help  toward  acquiring  the  power 
of  self-control  in  eating,  it  should  be  realized  how 
small  an  amount  of  food  is  actually  needed  for  a 
maintenance  of  the  daily  vital  expenditures  in- 
volved in  human  existence  while  performing  his 
duties  of  life.  Thus  it  has  been  ascertained,  on  a 
basis  of  strictly  scientific  calculation,  that  the 
energy  expended  in  a  three  mile  walk  can  be  re- 
plenished by  the  calories  contained  in  three 
medium-sized  olives  and  an  English  walnut.  Not 
less  amazing  is  the  fact  that  a  person  was  able  to 
propel  his  body  weight  against  the  pull  of  gravity 
all  the  way  up  the  555  feet  high  Washington  Monu- 
ment and  down  again,  on  the  energy  released  in  the 
assimilation  of  a  single  sardine  and  a  teaspoonful 
of  thick  fig-jam. 

From  these  facts  it  becomes  convincingly  clear 
that  the  amount  of  food  we  eat,  for  which  the  sys- 
tem has  no  use,  is  appalling.  But  this  is  not  all:  in 
physiology  and  religion  we  face  the  same  alterna- 
tives, that  what  is  not  for  us  is  against  us.  For  as 
the  introduction  of  a  single  morsel  of  food,  not 


63 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

needed  for  the  repair  and  general  up-keep  of  the 
system,  fails  to  find  a  place  in  its  economy,  it  follows 
that  at  some  time  or  other,  in  some  form  or  other, 
either  through  the  surgical  removal  from  the  sys- 
tem of  the  waste-heap  called  a  tumor;  or  through 
the  slow,  painful  excavations  over  the  channels  of 
respiration  termed  tuberculosis;  or  the  forcible,  con- 
vulsive evacuations  and  spontaneous  combustion  of 
body-waste  in  the  typhoid;  the  collection  and  isola- 
tion in  the  tissues  of  stagnant  fluids  as  in  dropsy, 
or  any  other  disease  utilized  as  an  expediency  in 
the  removal  from  the  organism  of  its  overflow  of 
decomposing  excess — Mother  Nature — that  great 
engineer  of  organized  life — introduces  a  balancing 
account  with  her  creatures,  and  removes  from  the 
culprit  his  illgotten  goods.  This  explains  the  re- 
currence of  "colds"  which  constitute  channels  for 
the  forceful  elimination  through  the  eyes,  nose  and 
throat  of  the  mostly  unnoticed  accumulation  of 
internal  sewerage  with  its  festering  centers,  ever 
ready  to  break  through  its  temporary  enclosures 
and  throw  the  system  into  serious  fevers — the 
opening  of  a  physiological  "barage  fire"  on  the 
organism  with  the  subsequent  specialized  attack 
on  some  body  organ — the  lungs,  pleura,  kidneys, 
liver,  intestines,  etc.,  in  terms  of  inflammation  and 
combustion  of  these  structures. 

Another  realization  which  cannot  fail  to  serve 
as  a  memento  mori  in  our  struggle  with  appetite,  is 
the  religious  incentive,  which,  deeper  than  any 
other  appeal,  should  impress  upon  the  Christian 
mind  its  profound  and  sinister  lesson.  It  is  the 
consciousness  of  duty — the  obligation  under  which 
we  find  ourselves  to  the  Author  of  our  lives  and 
the  Supreme  Architect  of  the  marvelous  instru- 


!\EW  LIGHT  OI\  LIVING 

ment  which,  in  the  form  of  a  physical  organism, 
has  been  placed  at  our  disposal  to  serve  us  as 
means  of  our  evolution.  And  to  violate  the  laws 
and  principles  involved  in  the  integrity  of  this 
instrument,  as  in  the  form  of  gluttony  or  harmful 
excesses  of  any  kind,  means  a  rupture  in  our  rela- 
tion to  the  very  center  of  energy  which  constitutes 
the  source  and  sustenance  of  our  lives.  It  means 
a  loss  to  our  existence  in  mental  keenness,  moral 
fitness  and  physical  energy,  with  a  corresponding 
foreshortening  of  life  itself  with  all  its  values  of 
development,  usefulness  and  service.  Under  the 
sway  of  the  law  of  causation — the  unbreakable 
chain  of  cause  and  effect  that  relates  with  unerring 
certitude  an  act  with  its  consequences — the  indi- 
vidual who  deliberately  indulges  in  food  or  drink 
which  he  knows  are  detrimental  to  his  health  and 
service,  draws  upon  himself  conditions  that  involve 
the  same  judicial  severity  on  the  mental  and  vital 
plane  as  the  destruction  of  life  and  property  brings 
out  on  the  social  and  communal  plane.  And  while 
the  transgressor  of  the  moral  and  vital  laws  may 
suffer  no  infringement  on  his  social  and  individual 
freedom,  yet  the  penitentiary  which  imprisons  the 
individual  in  the  form  of  racking  diseases  and  suf- 
fering, is  often  by  far  more  intolerable  than  the 
penitentiary  of  the  criminal  offense. 

After  having  considered  these  various  aspects 
of  quantitative  feeding,  with  the  inevitable  conse- 
quences of  disorder  arising  in  the  course  of  excess 
and  uncalled  for  indulgence,  it  will  be  easier  for 
the  individual  to  arrive  at  an  adequate  apprecia- 
tion of  the  amount  of  food  required  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  best  health  and  usefulness.  The 
motives  for  eating  should  be  carefully  scrutinized 

65 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

so  as  to  leave  him  in  no  uncertainty  whether  his 
needs  for  food  are  real  or  fancied. 

As  a  means  of  controlling  a  strong  appetite,  the 
individual,  at  the  beginning  of  the  meal,  and  be- 
fore his  appetite,  by  the  convulsive  rush  of  psy- 
chic stimulation,  has  carried  away  his  judgment, 
should  put  upon  his  plate  whatever  he  at  that  in- 
stant would  consider  to  be  a  fair  and  adequate 
amount  for  the  satisfaction  of  his  true  physiolog- 
ical needs.  Having  thus  brought  his  calm  judg- 
ment to  bear  upon  the  selection  of  his  food,  with  a 
proper  rating  of  capacity  and  requirement,  noth- 
ing should  prevail  upon  him  to  add  a  single  morsel 
to  his  meal. 

The  mental,  moral  and  physical  power,  which 
such  a  positive  and  determined  attitude  to  life  and 
its  principles  gives  to  the  individual,  will  be  mani- 
fested with  striking  impressiveness  in  every  act 
and  undertaking  of  his  daily  life.  It  will  show 
itself  in  the  power  of  his  will,  in  the  clearness  of 
his  judgment,  in  the  health  and  beauty  of  his  body, 
and  above  all  in  the  realization  of  himself  as  a 
soul  with  its  exhilarating  consciousness  of  moral 
triumph.  The  victory  of  self  over  appetite,  the 
triumph  of  will  over  sense-life — in  a  word,  the 
power  of  self-directed  evolution. 

From  this  it  becomes  evident  that  the  question 
of  quantity  in  diet  resolves  itself  to  a  question  of 
principle,  determined  by  intelligent  judgment  and 
moral  will.  After  all,  the  individual  must  deter- 
mine his  own  attitude  to  appetite  and  indulgence. 
He  must  examine  himself  from  the  standpoint  of 
temperament  and  environment,  as  the  latter  are 
of  greatest  importance  in  solving  his  problem.  As 
a  general  rule  the  nervous  and  high-strung  mind, 


66 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

by  virtue  of  its  accelerating  influence  on  the  vascu- 
lar exchanges,  demands  more  nourishment  for  the 
system  than  the  placid  and  phlegmatic  mind. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
the  larger  the  quantity  of  a  meal,  the  more  vital 
energy  is  used  up  in  its  digestion,  and  consequently 
may  render  less  net  profit  to  the  system  than  the 
smaller  meal.  Having  more  vital  energy  to  spend 
upon  his  smaller  quantity,  the  moderate  eater  has 
the  advantage  of  getting  his  food  more  thoroughly 
masticated  and  assimilated  than  the  heavy  eater. 
Consequently  we  may  not  infrequently  encounter 
the  dietetic  paradox  that  the  more  food  the  less 
nourishment,  and  that  one  egg  or  one  slice  of  meat 
may  yield  more  actual  nutritional  benefits  to  the 
eater  than  two  eggs  or  two  slices  of  meat.  It  is 
this  fact  that  lies  back  of  the  power,  so  frequently 
observed  during  fasting,  that  a  person  can  attend 
to  his  business  for  weeks,  without  the  intake  of 
any  form  of  nourishment.  For  while  the  fast  fur- 
nishes no  vital  income  to  the  system,  neither  does 
it  give  rise  to  any  of  the  expenditures  which,  in  the 
form  of  an  overcrowded  digestion,  imperfect  as- 
similation, and  excessive  elimination,  give  rise 
to  such  overwhelming  losses  to  the  vitality  of  the 
glutton  and  the  average  heavy  eater. 

Another  fact  in  diet  always  to  be  considered,  is 
the  difference  in  quality  between  concentrated 
foods,  such  as  dried  fruits,  butter,  cheese,  etc.,  and 
foods  that  retain  their  natural,  constitutional  bal- 
ance, such  as  fresh  fruit,  milk  and  vegetables, 
which  must  largely  influence  the  amount  of  their 
use.  On  a  similar  basis  we  must  carefully  distin- 
guish between  the  germs  or  seeds  of  foods  and 
their  pulp — the  grains  and  their  protective  wrap- 

67 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

per — in  our  selection  of  quantitative  eating.  Grain 
food  such  as  bread,  mush  and  any  form  of  cereals, 
constitute  the  very  germ  of  the  plant  and  is  conse- 
quently packed  with  all  the  energy  to  be  mani- 
fested in  its  growth  and  evolution.  This  principle 
holds  good  in  regard  to  any  form  of  seed,  includ- 
ing beans,  peas,  nuts  and  even  eggs — the  latter 
being  seeds  on  the  animal  plane. 

These  concentrated  forms  of  nourishment 
should  be  used  with  the  same  moderation  as  meat, 
and  never  exceed  four  meals  a  week.  As  to  nuts, 
it  is  safe  to  say,  that  four  or  five  walnuts  at  a 
meal,  not  to  exceed  three  meals  a  week,  consti- 
tutes a  fair  amount  of  that  highly  concentrated 
food  for  the  system.  On  the  same  scale  of  nutri- 
tion one  egg  a  day  sets  the  limit  of  safety  for  every 
person  who  prefers  health  to  indulgence,  and  the 
attainment  of  power — to  the  gratification  of  appe- 
tite. 


68 


THE  EINSTEIN  THEORY  APPLIED  TO  LIFE 

FROM  a  standpoint  of  metaphysics  the  Ein- 
stein world-conception  cannot  be  doubted. 
The  theory  in  its  general  term  was  already 
conceived,  for  more  than  twenty-five  hundred 
years  ago,  by  the  ancient  Greek  philosopher,  Her- 
aclete,  who,  in  his  famous  formula  "Pantha  Rhei" 
—all  is  motion — gave  to  the  world  the  modern 
theory  of  relativity.  Every  moment  of  time  ushers 
in  upon  the  stage  of  world-dynamics  a  new  and 
never  before  experienced  phase  of  existence.  To- 
day every  individual  on  this  planet  occupies  a 
position,  physically,  mentally  and  morally  differ- 
ing from  any  position  he  ever  had  before.  The 
earth  moves  through  a  space  in  cosmos  which  it 
never  before  has  traversed,  and  the  sun  itself,  with 
all  its  appendages  and  dependencies  of  planets 
and  moons,  stars  and  comets,  is  pioneering  the  uni- 
verse in  stellar  territories  of  new  and  inexperienced 
magnificence.  Every  unit  of  existence,  from  the 
atom  to  the  pleiades,  are  in  constant  motion,  en- 
tering incessantly  into  new  relations,  both  intern- 
ally and  externally,  to  itself  and  to  others.  No 
form  ever  occupied  the  same  position  twice;  no 
thoughts  or  ideas  are  ever  reproduced  in  their 
minutest  shades  of  meaning  and  expressiveness; 
no  type  of  life  ever  completely  covered  the  linea- 
ments of  any  other  type.  For  the  tiniest  snow 
crystal,  no  matter  how  apparently  exact  it  re- 

69 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

sembles  the  type  of  other  snow  crystals,  is  always 
at  work  on  its  own  reorganization. 

Now  in  this  universe  of  difference,  whether  in 
time,  space  or  form,  no  definite  relations  between 
things  can  be  possible.  Before  the  ray  of  a  star 
has  been  able  to  traverse  the  billions  of  miles  of 
distance  separating  it  from  its  neighbor  star,  it 
has  burned  itself  into  dust  and  disappeared  for- 
ever from  the  luminous  pageant  of  celestial 
wanderers.  We  are  gazing  today  on  stars,  which 
for  ages  ago  passed  out  of  existence,  while  their 
light-rays  are  still  on  their  way  through  the  starry 
deserts  of  space  to  continue  yet  for  future  ages  to 
reproduce  their  phantom  orbs  on  the  retinas  of 
coming  generations. 

It  is  thus  self-evident  that  every  position  we 
occupy  in  space,  and  the  subsequent  impact  of 
forces  that  arrive  or  depart  within  the  sphere  of 
our  cosmic  relationship,  bring  upon  us  a  new  train 
of  influences  with  their  power  to  alter  and  re-ad- 
just our  general  astro-physical  associations.  But 
important  as  our  relation  to  physical  conditions 
may  be,  it  covers  only  one  aspect  of  relativity, 
while  an  incalculably  more  important  phase,  yet  to 
be  realized,  lies  in  the  effect  produced  on  the 
moral  and  intellectual  plane,  where  thoughts  and 
ideals  are  crossing  and  recrossing  each  other's 
currents,  changing  purposes  and  thwarting  reso- 
lutions, as  the  motives  rise  into  light  or  sink  into 
darkness — ceaselessly  though  silently,  affecting 
the  course  of  human  destiny  in  terms  of  individual 
and  social  interrelations. 

Vices  and  virtues,  peace  and  war,  progress  and 
degeneracy  are  conditioned  by  mental  and  psychic 


70 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

relativity,  with  the  same  certainty  as  on  the  astro- 
physic  plane,  light  rays  are  affected  by  gravity, 
and  time  by  motion.  It  is  this  relativity  on  the 
moral  plane  that  determines  the  character  of  an 
act  and  the  resultant  ethics  of  social  relationship. 
It  is  this  relativity  that  should  enforce  tolerance 
and  patience  in  our  dealings  with  differences  of 
creed,  intelligence,  race  and  color.  Our  stand- 
ards of  life  are  maintained  by  the  attitude  we  hold 
to  life ;  and  from  a  moral  point  of  view  the  crude 
ethics  of  the  cave  man  or  of  the  South  Sea  Islander, 
may  be  gauged  by  purer  motives  and  stronger 
principles  than  the  man  of  the  social  refinements 
in  the  midst  of  modern  culture.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  attempt  of  the  back-to-nature-man  to 
apply  the  ethics  of  the  simple  life  of  the  past,  to 
the  super-complexity  of  present  social  relations, 
and  to  relegate  the  time-and-labor-saving  devices 
in  the  machinery  of  industry,  of  education  and  of 
government,  to  the  socialistic  and  naturalistic  level 
of  common  ownership,  with  its  individual  irrespon- 
sibility, and  lucky-go,  hap-hazard,  hand-to-mouth 
relationship,  is  no  more  reasonable  and  practicable 
than  to  reestablish  the  stage  coach  and  sailing 
vessel  as  agencies  for  the  commercial  avalanches 
of  national  and  international  exchanges.  No  re- 
turn to  old  conditions  is  possible.  The  past  must 
be  left  to  bury  the  past,  while  the  present  fixes  its 
gaze,  intensely  and  sanely,  on  the  future.  For  the 
solution  of  the  world  problem  is  not  to  return  to 
the  innocence  of  a  "golden  age,"  but  to  advance 
on  the  virtues  of  the  Golden  Rule.  And  it  is  here 
we  find  the  true  formula  for  "salvaging  of  civil- 
ization." It  is  in  the  force  of  conscience  that  the 
inequalities  of  men  will  find  their  common  de- 

71 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

visor.  If  men  in  their  relations  were  governed  by 
conscience,  despotism,  tyranny,  injustice,  cruelty, 
and  any  form  of  social  degeneracy  would  be  im- 
possible. There  is  no  industrial,  political  or 
religious  problem  so  complex  that  it  cannot  be 
solved  by  the  power  of  conscience,  nor  is  there 
any  system  of  existence,  no  matter  how  simple  and 
primitive,  that  can  endure  without  it. 

For  it  is  only  through  the  force  of  conscience 
that  the  individual  can  preserve  the  sense  of  moral 
responsibility,  which  the  socialization  or  commun- 
alization  of  the  state,  with  its  sway  of  "herd-con- 
science," tries  to  remove.  Consequently,  any  re- 
form which  does  not  proceed  from  the  particular 
to  the  general ;  i.  e.,  from  the  individual  to  the  com- 
munal, but  on  the  contrary  starts  its  impulse  in 
the  latter,  gives  to  the  individual  an  opportunity  to 
dissolve  his  conscience  in  the  conscience  of  the 
mass,  and  to  that  extent  lose  his  sense  of  personal 
responsibility  and  the  power  of  self-directed  un- 
foldment.  It  was  this  absence  of  personal  respon- 
sibility among  the  soldiers  of  the  Russian  Army  that 
brought  about  its  defeat  in  the  war  with  Japan, 
1905,  and  it  is  the  same  fatal  defect  that  demoral- 
izes and  enfeebles  the  industrial  and  cultural  in- 
itiatives of  the  Russian  Commonwealth  of  today. 
And  any  attitude  of  a  government  which  tends  to 
weaken  the  individual  responsibility  of  its  citizens — 
socially,  politically  or  industrially — destroys  the 
fine  edge  of  their  independent,  self-directed  power 
of  thought,  and  leads  to  general  demoralization. 
The  individual  with  his  personal  responsibility 
constitutes  a  center  of  communal  gravity,  while 
society  with  its  herd-conscience  goes  into  per- 
petual solvency,  either  toward  progression  or  re- 
trogression. 
72 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

And  this  brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  impend- 
ing crisis :  that  unless  society  awards  the  individual 
the  full  freedom  to  exercise  his  moral  responsibility 
and  power  of  conscience — with  society  ever  ready 
to  respond  to  the  ensuing  central  impulse  of  his 
nature — our  moral  cosmos  will  lose  its  center  of 
gravity  and  return  to  chaos  from  which  it  sprang. 
In  the  cosmogony  of  old  Greece,  Cosmos  emerged 
from  Chaos,  guided  by  the  torch  of  Eros — (Love). 
And  as  love  depends  on  the  individual  rather  than 
on  the  social  consciousness  for  its  meaning  and  de- 
termination, so  it  becomes  evident  that  unless  we 
maintain  the  light  of  love  as  the  guiding  force  in 
our  individual  life,  the  world  will  retrograde  in  its 
motion,  and  in  place  of  cosmos  advancing  on  chaos, 
the  latter  will  turn  upon  cosmos.  In  other  words, 
we  must  deal  directly  with  the  individual,  and  in 
thought,  word  and  act,  bring  before  his  mind 
the  consciousness  of  his  tremendous  responsibility 
as  a  human  being  equipped  with  power  to  save 
or  wreck  the  world. 


73 


XI 
SELF-DIRECTED  EVOLUTION 

IN  his  failure  to  appreciate  the  deeper  relation- 
ship between  man  and  nature,  the  sensualist 
falls  utterly  short  in  his  standards  of  evolution. 
Even  in  her  strongest  exhibitions,  nature  is  as  in- 
complete without  man,  as  man  is  incomplete  with- 
out nature.  They  are  complimentary  to  each 
other,  like  the  artist  and  his  instrument.  Environ- 
ment furnishes  the  means  by  which  the  individual 
may  conquer  himself,  and  in  the  death-struggle 
of  his  physical  life  evolve  the  virtues  of  his  im- 
mortal life. 

To  "go-back-to-nature"  is  to  surrender  principle 
to  law,  intellect  to  instinct,  spiritual  energies  to 
elemental  forces.  It  means  the  sacrifice  of  the 
higher  for  the  lower;  the  grafting  of  a  flower  upon 
the  stem  of  a  weed,  or  a  luscious  fruit  tree  upon  a 
wild  tree  of  the  forest.  In  place  of  surrendering 
to  the  elemental  sway  of  nature's  forces,  we  should 
control,  direct  and  elevate  nature  into  ever  higher 
expressions  of  growth,  beauty  and  service.  To 
"go-back-to-nature"  is  to  the  mind  what  "return 
to  dust"  is  to  the  body;  the  discentralization  and 
dissolution  of  intellectual  self-hood  and  self-deter- 
mining individuality.  Our  business  is  not  to  exist 
and  die  only,  but  to  live  and  survive;  not  merely 
to  enjoy,  but  to  improve ;  not  only  to  accept  life  as 
a  birthday  gift,  but  to  use  it  as  a  constructive 
power  in  the  service  of  humanity. 

74 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

For  with  all  her  power  and  archaic  intelligence, 
Nature  must  yet  remain  our  servant.  Only  to  the 
extent  we  can  intelligently  influence  Her  processes 
and  assume  mastery  of  our  environments,  are  we 
in  line  with  our  own  evolution.  There  is  no  neu- 
trality, no  pose  of  indecision  in  nature.  Either 
onward  or  backward;  either  we  must  lift  our- 
selves upward  or  be  dragged  downward.  The 
same  irresistible  force  that  stirs  in  the  seed,  stirs 
in  the  weed,  and  man  must  either  grow  immortal 
in  good  or  mortal  in  evil.  We  are  creators  on  all 
lines  and  in  all  aspects  of  growth.  Everything  we 
touch  with  our  motives  springs  into  life  and  grows 
into  the  direction  of  our  ideals.  Give  your  interest  to 
a  vice,  and  it  grows  under  its  influence,  as  a  weed 
grows  under  the  influence  of  water  and  air.  Our 
wills  impart  the  magic  of  growth  to  our  posses- 
sions ;  to  the  seeds  of  virtue  or  to  the  weeds  of  vice. 

In  place  of  allowing  ourselves  to  be  hustled  for- 
ward and  backward  as  puppets  in  the  relentless 
grip  of  pending  conditions,  we  should  let  our  judg- 
ment devise,  and  our  will  execute  principles  of 
moral  life,  standardized  and  sanctioned  by  con- 
science. Self-directed  evolution  means  that  the 
individual  assumes  control  of  his  own  elemental 
forces,  and  outlines  his  own  vital  and  mental 
career.  His  gauge  must  be  spiritual,  not  sensuous, 
and  his  attitude  to  life,  that  of  a  conquering  hero, 
converting  and  organizing  every  emotion,  arising 
from  the  subconscious  plane,  into  law-abiding, 
principle-governed  agencies  of  thought  and  action. 
To  allow  the  lower  life  to  control  the  higher  in 
terms  of  unhealthy  habits  and  life-menacing  indul- 
gences is  impossible  for  everyone  who  aims  at  the 
attainment  of  moral-free  will  and  a  self-governed 
individuality. 

75 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

As  demonstrated  by  recent  researches  in  the 
field  of  psycho-analysis,  the  human  being  is  made 
up  of  a  host  of  sub-conscious  entities,  endowed 
with  individual  consciousness,  and  capable  of  in- 
fluencing the  central  individual  self  with  fluctuat- 
ing standards  of  morality.  Now,  self-directed 
evolution  means  the  power  of  an  individual  to 
assume  control  and  dictatorship  of  his  subcon- 
scious kingdom,  and  to  impress  upon  its  denizens 
the  insignia  of  moral  exaltation  and  spiritual  con- 
sanguinity which  alone  insures  a  morally  guaged 
and  biologically  sustained  unity  of  individual 
advance. 

Every  expression  of  individual  consciousness 
has  its  source  in  the  operation  of  spiritual  or  ele- 
mental forces,  inspired  either  by  egotism  or  altru- 
ism; by  motives  either  of  personal  ambition  or  of 
universal  service.  Thus  to  the  extent  that  art,  as 
an  expression  of  individuality,  is  made  a  vehicle 
for  vanity,  pride  or  profit,  it  connects  with  down- 
ward or  backward-directed  forces,  leading  to  de- 
generacy and  oblivion ;  while  to  the  extent  the  art- 
impulse  expresses  itself  in  terms  of  service  and 
for  the  love  of  beauty  and  truth,  does  it  spring 
from  the  soul  and  genius  of  man's  immortal,  eter- 
nal self.  The  former  is  a  branch  from  the  spiritual 
tree  of  life,  skilfully  grafted  upon  the  top  root  of 
egotistic  motives  and  made  to  blossom  forth  in  the 
evanescent  splendor  of  a  sense  governed  world, 
but  yields  no  fruit  nor  survival  value  to  life  itself; 
the  latter  springs  from  perfected  moral  excellence 
with  its  root  in  eternal  life  itself  and  its  fruits  in 
the  purity  and  altruism  of  a  morally  developing 
humanity.  Hence  we  have  a  sensual  art  and  a 
moral  art;  and,  whether  expressed  through  the 


76 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

brush  of  the  painter,  the  chisel  of  the  sculptor,  or 
the  pen  of  the  poet,  this  art  confers  upon  the  artist 
the  tremendous  alternative  of  either  lifting  earth 
up  to  Heaven,  or  dragging  Heaven  down  to  earth. 
This  art,  when  expressed  in  the  general  vehicle  of 
fiction — the  novel  or  the  drama — with  the  leading 
motives  derived  from  the  complexities  of  unre- 
generated  popular  sense-life,  creates  such  literary 
productions  as  we  find  in  the  carnal  realism  of  the 
French  naturalists,  in  the  moral  pathology  of  an 
Ibsen  and  Strindberg,  or  the  scoffing,  muck-raking 
cynicism  of  a  Bernard  Shaw. 

This  distinction  in  the  expressions  of  motives 
obtains  in  every  interpretive  endeavor  of  the 
individual  in  his  relation  to  art,  science  or  litera- 
ture; in  expressions  of  oratory,  song,  music  or 
dance.  For  in  every  endeavor  is  inevitably  in- 
volved the  leading  motives  of  the  performer; 
either  unselfishness  or  egotism,  love  or  desire; 
appeals  to  the  ideality  of  the  superman,  or  sugges- 
tions to  the  grotesque,  sensuous,  vulgar  and  brutal 
in  the  cave-man.  And  the  enormous  task  before 
us  today  is  to  acquire  the  ominous  power  of  judg- 
ment in  selecting  our  leaders.  We  must  not  only 
have  eyes,  but  also  the  power  of  seeing;  not  only 
have  the  privilege  of  asking,  but  a  knowledge  of 
the  right  thing  to  ask  for.  Once  for  all  we  must 
be  made  to  recognize  as  an  absolute  guide  for  life 
and  conduct  that  whatever  we  may  acquire  in 
power  or  possession,  if  not  paid  for  in  some  form 
or  another,  in  money,  time  or  work,  is  not  ours, 
and  will  never  become  an  organized  part  of  our 
nature.  Having  merely  yielded  to  temporary  coer- 
sion,  the  situation  abides  the  time  when  vital, 
moral  or  physical  conditions  shall  introduce  the 


77 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

crisis  by  which  a  balancing  of  forces  and  restora- 
tion of  the  disturbed  individual  equilibrium  will 
be  made  possible.  For  the  keynote  to  health  and 
survival  lies  in  the  maintenance  of  an  equilibrium 
between  the  individual  and  his  environment,  and 
is  back  of  the  whole  vital  biologic  process,  which 
is  known  as  the  "struggle  for  existence"  or  the 
"survival  of  the  fittest,"  with  its  presence  mani- 
fested in  every  accident,  every  disease,  every 
phase  of  fortune  or  misfortune.  The  entire  sweep 
of  evolution,  with  all  its  movements  of  life  and 
death,  rise  and  fall  of  races  and  species,  is  a  play 
of  cosmic  affinities  at  work  on  every  entity  or  unit 
of  life,  from  the  Amoeba  to  man,  toward  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  vast,  universal  merger,  in  which 
every  individual  will  strike  a  level  of  equilibrium 
and  poise.  And  the  attitude  by  which  the  indi- 
vidual most  readily  can  further  this  grand  integral 
ensemble  of  moral  and  vital  forces  lies  in  the  con- 
centration of  his  mind  upon  some  neutral,  super- 
sensual  point  of  interest,  by  its  very  nature  ele- 
vated above  every  motive  of  personal  irritation. 
Attitudes  that  may  yield  such  imperturbable  cen- 
ters of  repose  may  be  found  in  the  realization  of 
concepts  like  Unity,  Soul,  Immortality,  Space, 
Humanity,  or  the  effort  to  visualize  in  their  full 
optic  perspective  the  symbols  of  the  Star,  the  Cross 
or  the  Heart.  Thus  detached  from  the  storm-centers 
of  the  lower  life  with  its  chaos  of  broken  laws  and 
violated  principles,  the  individual  ceases  momen- 
tarily to  be  subject  to  the  jarring  forces  of  sin 
and  passion,  and  merges  into  the  calm  zone  of 
serenity,  rhythm  and  harmony.  It  is  this  shifting 
of  centers  of  consciousness  that  gives  the  eternal 
value  to  silence  and  its  companion-mood  medita- 


78 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

tion ;  the  release  and  exaltation  of  the  mind,  as  it 
temporarily  escapes  from  the  burden  of  its  lower 
self  with  the  harassing  complexities  of  desires, 
worries  and  disappointments.  During  the  night 
we  experience  the  physiological  phase  of  this  re- 
lease, in  the  restorative,  vital  process  which  brings 
rest,  strength  and  rejuvenation  to  the  individual 
after  a  night's  sleep. 

Applied  to  the  daily  events  of  our  life,  this 
practice  of  silence,  concentration  and  meditation, 
will  gradually  give  rise  to  a  state  of  consciousness 
in  our  mind,  which  shall  enable  us  to  deal  with  the 
very  heart  of  things,  and  to  direct  the  career  of 
our  own  evolution.  For  it  is  the  lack  of  knowledge 
—lack  of  a  thorough,  well-grounded  and  morally 
convincing  knowledge  of  things  and  events,  that 
lies  back  of  all  errors  and  mistakes  of  human  life. 
Such  a  knowledge  will  elevate  our  ideals  into  posi- 
tive creative  forces,  and  link  our  motives  and 
actions  with  the  all-embracing  chain  of  human 
sympathy  and  solidarity  which  should  transfigure 
every  impulse  of  our  complex  nature  into  agencies 
for  the  promotion  of  universal  interests.  Self- 
directed  evolution  is  the  will  in  action,  the  deter- 
mination of  the  individual  to  eliminate  from  his 
nature  every  element  of  his  personality — physi- 
cally, mentally,  or  morally — that  in  any  way  forms 
an  obstruction  to  his  progress.  The  removal  of  old 
tendencies,  the  clearing  away  of  race  habits  from 
the  field  of  consciousness,  a  careful  analysis  of 
every  indulgence  as  to  its  health  and  usefulness 
in  our  development,  and  the  willingness  of  self- 
denial  and  self-sacrifice  for  the  furtherance  of 
truth  and  virtue  can  alone  bring  about  the  triumph 


79 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

of  self-control,  without  which  self-directed  evolu- 
tion becomes  impossible. 

Every  day  our  life  should  express  the  triumph 
of  growth,  the  glory  of  action,  the  beauty  of  sacri- 
fice. "For  each  day,  well  lived,  turns  yesterday 
into  a  dream  of  happiness,  and  tomorrow  into  a 
vision  of  hope." 


80 


XII 

tt 


Lest  We  Forget" 


THERE  is  a  tendency  in  modern  times  to  widen 
the  narrow  road  of  life  by  a  general  disregard 
of  the  constructive  laws  and  principles  that 
lie  back  of  the  entire  progressive  movement  of 
evolution. 

Now,  while  the  conditions  of  existence  may  dif- 
fer, according  to  natural  environments  and  indi- 
vidual temperaments,  yet  the  underlying  forces  of 
law  and  purpose  remain  eternally  the  same.  For 
laws  are  the  guide  boards  of  evolution,  the  unerring 
vanguards  of  progress,  at  once  prompting  and  ar- 
resting, directing  and  correcting,  the  biologic 
advance.  In  other  words,  law  constitutes  a  self- 
adjusting  agency,  determining  through  individual 
reactions,  the  physical,  mental  and  moral  fitness  of 
an  entity  to  opportunities  of  life  and  service. 

Consequently  law  asserts  its  corrective  power 
only  on  him  who  attempts  its  violation,  while  it 
gives  unseen  aid  to  every  action  or  movement 
which  follows  its  course  of  order.  A  free  moral 
agent,  the  individual  in  his  relation  to  law  assumes 
the  paradoxial  attitude  of  being  at  once  a  servant 
and  a  master,  whose  surrender  means  conquest  and 
who,  through  obedience  alone,  can  become  free. 
Each  step  of  progress  brings  us  under  the  domin- 
ion of  a  new  law  whose  conditions  we  can  over- 
come only  by  obeying  them.  It  is  the  restatement, 
in  natural  evolution,  of  the  ancient  sphinx  holding 
up  its  grim,  old  riddle  to  the  wayfarer  who  must 
either  solve  its  propositions  or  perish. 

Hence  it  is  not  only  vigilance,  but  vigilance  in 
the  right  direction,  that  holds  the  price  of  liberty. 

81 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

There  is  no  other  slavery  than  ignorance,  and  no 
other  freedom  than  truth.  By  obeying  the  law- 
be  it  physical,  moral  or  spiritual — we  obtain  the 
key  that  will  work  out  the  solution  of  any  condi- 
tion. And  just  as  in  solving  a  problem  in  mathe- 
matics, we  must  analyze  and  test  the  elements  of 
its  composition,  so  in  solving  the  problem  of  exist- 
ence we  must  analyze  and  weigh  the  integral  prin- 
ciples of  its  nature,  which  is  possible  only  through 
the  processes  of  life  itself  in  the  scientific,  philoso- 
phical and  spiritual  realization  of  the  character 
and  tendency  of  leading  motives. 

Moreover,  as  the  function  of  law  is  to  enforce 
individual  recognition  of  abstract  principles  in 
their  application  to  moral  and  vital  virtues,  it  fol- 
lows that  it  is  only  through  the  exaltation  and 
purification  of  our  motives  that  we  can  discover 
the  operation  of  new  and  deeper  laws.  It  is  not 
a  mere  coincidence  that  the  leading  minds  of  all 
ages  have  been  those  of  great  spiritual  devotion. 
It  was  under  the  impulsion  of  a  spiritual  Olympus 
that  Pheidias,  in  his  Parthenon,  laid  down  archi- 
tectural principles  which  in  scientific  accuracy, 
artistic  beauty  and  spiritual  exaltation  have 
remained  unparalleled  in  the  subsequent  twenty- 
five  centuries  of  architectural  efforts.  It  was  this 
same  impulse  of  the  soul  that  inspired  Michael 
Angelo  in  sculpture,  Raphael  in  painting,  Bach 
and  Beethoven  in  music,  Shakespeare  in  drama, 
Humboldt  in  nature,  Carlyle  in  history,  Tennyson 
and  Walt  Whitman  in  poetry.  That  the  intellect 
may  know,  the  soul  must  see,  and  the  vision — 
which  alone  can  discern  the  deeper  meaning  of 
laws  and  principles — must  be  purified  and  exalted 
through  spiritual  devotion. 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

Now,  if  the  spiritual  or  religious  acceptance  of 
the  universe  with  its  exaltation  of  life  and  motives 
brought  out  the  genius  and  creative  powers  of  the 
master-minds  of  the  past,  it  is  in  the  natural  order 
of  things  that  a  materialization  of  life  must  give 
rise  to  the  very  opposite.  For  as  materalism  stands 
for  the  disregard  of  every  consideration  not 
directly  promoting  the  comfort  and  pleasure  of 
the  material  and  sensual  part  of  our  nature,  it 
follows  that  its  mastery  over  the  mind  means  a 
gradual  elimination  from  individual  conscious- 
ness of  every  power  and  function  associated  with 
the  religious  and  spiritual  life  of  humanity.  For 
as  any  agency  depends  for  its  existence  and 
power  upon  the  accuracy  of  the  avenues  through 
which  it  receives  its  communication,  so  the  mind, 
which  in  consequence  of  its  materialism,  is  iso- 
lated from  spiritual  influences,  gradually  becomes 
unconscious  to  every  source  of  intelligence  other 
than  that  arising  from  material  sensation.  Thus 
isolated  from  every  aspect  of  life  other  than  that 
which  directly  impresses  his  senses,  the  materialist 
finds  his  entire  mental  and  moral  energy  concen- 
trated on  this  lower  plane  of  life — the  sensuous 
—which,  while  isolating  his  mind  from  higher 
institutions,  gives  to  his  instincts  and  sensuality 
an  entirely  undue  and  eventually  degenerating 
influence. 

The  central  spring  and  preserving  power  in 
evolution  is  the  ever  present  urge  called  the  "sur- 
vival of  the  fittest."  Now,  the  nature  and  the  issue 
of  this  world  process — if  on  the  spiritual  plane,  in- 
volves moral  and  spiritual  survival;  if  on  the 
material,  the  safeguarding  of  purely  material  inter- 
ests. The  difference  is  fundamental,  determining 


8S 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

the  entire  career  of  the  human  being;  for  as  the 
struggle  for  spiritual  existence  involves  the  quick- 
ening and  strengthening  of  universal  virtues,  em- 
bracing the  welfare  of  the  entire  human  race,  so 
the  struggle  for  material  or  sensual  existence  is 
limited  to  efforts  for  the  mere  personal  self,  and 
as  such  leading  to  the  fatal,  demoralizing  life, 
which  gradually  isolates  the  man  from  the  very 
influences  that  lie  back  of  the  evolution  of  his  own 

humanity. 

*      *      * 

The  relapse  of  an  individual  from  his  high  plane 
of  altruistic  and  humanistic  motives  to  the  low 
level  of  selfishness  brings  about  changes  of  con- 
sciousness that  correspond  to  the  changes  that 
take  place  in  the  field  of  physiological  chemistry 
when  structures  of  organized  life,  through  pro- 
cesses of  decomposition,  break  down  into  alcohols, 
hydroxyls  and  acetic  acids.  The  breaking  down 
of  moral  nature  differs  in  no  way  from  the  break- 
ing down  of  physical  nature,  and  the  departure 
of  a  soul  from  moral  purity  into  the  decadence  of 
sensuality  and  sordid  greed  proceeds  through 
stages  of  descent  perfectly  analagous  to  those  that 
take  place  in  the  passage  of  healthy  tissue  into 
states  of  decay  and  putrefaction. 

In  the  cultural  life  of  modern  society  the  influ- 
ence of  the  materialistic  tendency  is  in  fatal  evi- 
dence. In  our  relation  to  dramatic  representa- 
tions this  tendency  is  especially  pronounced.  The 
spiritual  penetration  and  moral  interest  in  life 
which  enabled  an  audience  in  old  Greece  to  listen 
in  wrapt  attention  for  several  hours  to  a  tragedy 
of  Aeschylus,  not  for  the  sake  of  entertainment  or 
amusement,  but  for  the  sake  of  edification,  has  be- 

84 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

come  a  lost  art  to  modern  theatre  goers.  The 
nervous  tension  of  our  natures  demands  the  short- 
circuited  methods  of  the  photo-drama  and  the 
vaudeville. 

The  dramatic  organism  breaking  down  into 
"skits"  and  "scenarios,"  is  reduced  to  fragments 
of  isolated  purposes  and  sporadic  emotions,  sport- 
ing in  the  flash-light  of  ever  shifting  motives,  while 
stimulated  into  conculsive  though  puerile  actions 
by  injections  of  half  veiled  suggestions.  The  en- 
tire drama  is  dissected  or  vivisected  in  "naked 
truths"  and  "frank  portrayals"  interspersed  with 
moral  thrills  and  ganglionic  shocks,  while  the 
breathless  succession  of  swift  racing  incidents  reel 
off  human  destines  at  the  rate  of  a  year  a  minute, 
galvanizing  into  seeming  vitality  the  fading 
energies  of  an  over-stimulated  and  exhausted 
nerve  life. 

The  same  nervous  exhaustion  is  evidenced  in 
our  popular  music  which,  from  the  deep  emotions 
and  exalted  feelings  of  the  old  folk-songs,  is  de- 
parting into  the  nerve-whipping  tone-spasms  of 
"ragtime"  and  "jazz."  So  unwholesome  to  the 
sensitive  mind  and  body  is  this  latest  anomaly  of 
music  that  in  the  clinical  report  that  came  to  us 
from  a  field  hospital  in  France  where  music  had 
been  employed — and  very  successfully — as  a 
means  of  sedative  or  "shock  absorber"  to  patients 
suffering  from  shell  shock,  the  introduction  of 
"jazz"  caused  the  entire  ward  to  show  signs  of 
the  greatest  uneasiness,  bordering  in  some  cases 
on  frenzy  and  convulsions.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  soothing  rhythms  and  mollifying  chords  of  our 
old,  beautiful  folk-songs  brought  to  the  patients  a 


85 


HEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

peacefulness  and  poise  that  proved  to  be  of  great- 
est value  in  their  treatment  and  recovery. 

And  what  is  the  "tango,"  the  "fox  trot,"  the 
"shimmy,"  and  other  "high  step"  and  "low  bow" 
varieties — the  inartistic,  senseless  and  vulgar  in- 
novations of  the  totally  nude  "nature"  dances, 
"problem"  dances,  "emotional"  dances,  "realistic 
movements,"  "cubic  postures,"  etc.,  but  the  ethical 
breakdown  from  the  dignified  movements,  quiet 
grace  and  ethical  beauty  of  the  classic  dances  into 
vulgar  and  degenerate  substitutes.  It  is  the  ever 
present  failure  of  the  nervously  overtaxed  mind  of 
the  present  age  to  sustain  the  moral  coherency 
and  emotional  control  as  represented  in  the  rhy- 
thmic movements,  restrained  pose  and  modest  at- 
tire of  the  time  of  our  forebears. 

The  same  principle  of  moral  decadence  meets 
us  in  some  of  the  departures  of  modern  paintings, 
as  for  instance,  in  the  weird  concepts  of  "futurism" 
— the  uncalled  for  and  grotesquely  nude,  with  ita 
unreal  and  pathological  "realism."  It  is  the  de- 
parture from  ideal  purity  to  physical  embellish- 
ment; the  breaking  down  of  spirituality  into 
materiality,  of  morality  into  sensuality — of  the 
whole  and  unified,  into  the  fragmentary  and  dis- 
connected. 

This  work  of  destruction  is  traceable  through- 
out every  departure  of  modern  life,  from  the  dance 
hall  to  the  pulpit,  from  the  street  corner  oratory 
to  the  accepted  standards  of  elocution.  Now 
"jazz"  is  to  music  what  "slang"  is  to  language — 
and  the  creative  art  of  building  words  into  lin- 
guistic structures  of  inspiring  sentences,  ideals  and 
feelings  into  symbols  and  character,  is  rapidly  be- 
coming a  sport  of  incongruous  articulations — a 


86 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

clever  juggling  with  ideas  into  a  haphazard  ver- 
bal mosaic.  Sermons  themselves,  which  should 
serve  as  vehicles  for  the  most  inspiring  and  ex- 
alted emotions,  are,  with  increasing  frequency, 
savored  with  the  jocose  effusions  of  the  circus 
clown.  And  when  comparing  our  modern  busi- 
ness edifices  of  worship  with  the  inspiring  temple 
structures  of  ancient  Egypt,  Greece  and  Rome— 
their  Parthenons,  mausoleums,  and  even  the  cathe- 
drals of  early  Christendom — it  is  striking  how  fit- 
tingly the  principle  of  a  thing  invests  itself  in  the 
corresponding  form — the  morally  debased  into  the 
materially  grotesque. 

The  average  contemporary  novel  or  "short 
story"  is  hardly  more  than  a  collection  of  news- 
paper incidents,  bound  in  cloth,  with  rough  edges 
and  gilt  top.  It  is  a  restatement  in  print  of  the 
raw  thought — hash  of  backyard  gossip,  the  sen- 
sualities of  the  dance  hall,  the  cheap,  puerile  emo- 
tions of  milady's  parlor,  with  its  attractive  blend 
of  nauseating  vanities,  soulless  cynicisms  and 
highly  spiced  yellow  journalism — presented  in  that 
spirit  of  "frankness"  and  "chatty"  tone  which  is 
so  "catchy"  in  the  "best  sellers  of  the  season."  It 
is  the  wholesome,  thoughtful,  humanizing  philoso- 
phy of  the  classic  novel — the  novel  of  George  Eliot, 
Bronte,  Scott,  Dickens,  Hugo,  Stael,  von  Holstein, 
etc. — breaking  down  into  the  microbic  composi- 
tions of  the  "up  to  date"  short-story  writings. 

It  is  this  attempt  of  our  modern  time  to  bring 
about  a  reversion  of  the  evolutionary  order  and 
materialize  the  soul  in  place  of  spiritualizing  mat- 
ter— to  force  the  larger  into  the  compass  of  the 
smaller — that  gives  rise  to  the  agonizing  con- 
sciousness of  high  soaring  ideals  strangled  in  the 

87 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

grip  of  materiality — a  consciousness  which  lies 
back  of  the  entire  soul-fever  with  its  delirious, 
unreasoning  effort  to  break  away  from  some  un- 
defined but  threatening  moral  world-danger.  In 
every  walk  and  pursuit  of  life  we  meet  this  tossing 
about  of  the  fever-stricken  mind,  manifesting  in 
business  as  well  as  in  art,  in  science  and  religion, 
in  literature  and  education,  in  amusement,  in 
divorces  and  in  crime.  Sin  has  become  interesting 
and  attractive,  virtue  cold  and  repelling.  Poise, 
safety,  care  are  thrown  overboard,  while  speed 
defiant  holds  the  steering  gear.  The  world  is 
struck  by  moral  panic  and  tries  to  escape  from  the 
scathing  indictments  of  its  outraged  virtues.  An- 
cient virtue,  with  its  poised,  self-sustained  moral- 
ity, is  breaking  down  into  the  pathology  of  do- 
mesticated "vampire"  types,  "soul  brides,"  "vic- 
ious triangles,"  inescapable  "parallels,"  "hypnotic 
dissections,"  and  courtroom  melodramas,  with  all 
the  ennobling,  refining  sacredness  of  domestic  se- 
clusion and  chaste  reserve  thrown  wide  open  to 
the  vultures  of  a  scandal-hungry  public.  The  so- 
cial life  is  an  actualization  of  the  old  Hindu  par- 
able of  the  man  who  plunged  into  the  river  current 
to  find  a  diadem  of  lustrous  beauty  flashing  from 
the  deep.  And  though  the  jewels  were  in  plain 
sight,  the  eager  diver  was  unable  to  find  them. 
Then  suddenly  a  glimpse  of  light  caught  his  eye 
from  above — and  lo!  on  the  projecting  branch  of 
an  old  tree,  high  above  his  head,  hung  the  real  dia- 
dem, the  image  of  which  he  had  seen  reflected  in 
the  water. 

This  delirious  hunt  for  a  spiritual  ideal,  reflected 
and  distorted  in  the  mud  of  sensuality,  is  impress- 
ing itself  more  or  less  upon  every  feature  of 


88 


NEW  LIGHT  O/V  LIVING 

modern  civilization.  Speed  is  king!  The  greatest 
vigilance  is  required  by  the  road  police  to  prevent 
the  "speed  fiend/'  not  only  from  "annihilating 
space,"  but  also  from  annihilating  himself  and  hig 
fellow  travelers.  In  business  his  speed  mania  is 
scored  by  records  of  reckless  plunges,  chance- 
takings,  gamblings,  bettings,  and  a  general  fas- 
cination for  uncertainties.  His  meals  are  race 
courses  where  the  foodstuffs,  in  convulsive  hurry, 
are  precipitated  down  his  throat — hardly  touched 
by  his  molar  mechanism.  The  eating  speed  is 
facilitated  in  forms  of  tabulated  food  cencentra- 
tions,  soup  tabloids,  malthoid  wafers,  instantane- 
ous coffee,  chocolate  tablets,  predigested  break- 
fast foods,  etc.  When  the  digestive  mechanism, 
from  very  natural  reasons,  falls  behind  in  the  die- 
tetic schedule,  a  smart  pill  will  speed  up  the  process 
and  whip  the  wornout  energies  into  line  with  the 
continually  foreshortened  vital  speed  limits. 

But  this  speed  is  not  in  pace  with  the  march  of 
true  evolution.  In  place  of  a  speed  of  life  it  often 
turns  out  to  be  the  speed  of  death.  In  spite  of  ad- 
vanced hygiene  and  sanitation — surpassing  every 
recorded  effort  in  ancient  and  modern  history — 
the  casualties  of  mortal  diseases  are  constantly  in- 
creasing. Last  year  175,000  vital  speed  fiends 
were  fatally  wrecked  on  the  highway  of  life  over 
the  handicap  of  typhoid  fever;  while  a  similar 
amount  were  killed  in  collision  with  Bright's  dis- 
ease ;  and  still  another  hundred  thousand  through 
attacks  of  heart  failure,  cancer,  tuberculosis  and 
insanity.  Furthermore,  clinical  statistics  make  the 
staggering  assertion  that  last  year  every  seventh 
woman  in  the  United  States,  dying  after  the  age  of 
forty,  showed  cancer  as  the  cause  of  her  death! 


89 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

But  outdistancing  them  all  in  the  swift  race  with 
death  is  the  infant  mortality,  which,  between  the 
ages  of  one  and  five,  in  the  course  of  twelve 
months  snuffed  out  300,000  lives,  or  six  times  the 
sum  of  casualties  in  the  American  army  during 
their  entire  campaign!  It  is  the  speed  of  the 
fathers  breaking  upon  the  career  of  the  children. 

For  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  first,  last 
and  ever  present  cause  of  degeneracy  is  infrac- 
tion of  some  moral,  mental  or  physical  law.  Yet 
the  statement,  "to  break  a  law,"  is  a  misnomer. 
No  law  can  be  broken.  It  is  not  we  who  break  the 
law,  it  is  the  law  that  breaks  us,  as  the  boulder 
breaks  the  dashing  waves.  And,  like  the  latter, 
our  continuity  becomes  shattered,  leaving  in  the 
wake  of  personality  a  splitting  or  dismemberment 
of  its  constitutional  unity,  which  again  means  a 
breaking  up  of  motives  into  fragments  of  char- 
acter and  moral  convictions.  And  it  is  in  this 
breakage  with  universal  laws  that  the  individual 
finds  himself  losing  hold  on  the  harmony  of  feel- 
ing, coherency  of  thought  and  rhythm  of  ex- 
pression, which,  if  not  restituted,  must  lead  to 
collapse  of  his  moral  poise  and  intellectual  bal- 
ance. 

Now,  the  causes  for  this  departure  from  the  high 
destinies  for  which  man  was  born  are  not  to  be 
found  in  his  environment  or  evolutionary  impedi- 
ments, but  in  his  voluntary  surrender  to  the  forces 
of  degeneracy.  "It  is  the  loss  of  a  people's  vision," 
said  Channing,  "that  leads  to  its  downfall." 
When,  in  the  course  of  his  evolution,  the  individual 
determined  to  shift  his  interests  from  the  ideal  to 
the  concrete,  from  spirituality  to  materiality,  from 
his  eternal  position  as  soul  to  his  ephemeral  posi- 


90 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

tion  as  body — he  started  the  downward  career 
which  little  by  little  caused  him  to  lose  hold  on 
life's  reality  and  become  a  victim  of  laws  and  prin- 
ciples which,  through  the  growing  dimness  of  his 
inner  vision,  he  no  longer  was  able  to  understand. 
For  man  grows  in  the  direction  of  his  ideal. 
With  his  ideal  absorbed  in  physical  existence  his 
perspective  of  life  becomes  correspondingly  nar- 
rowed. The  foreshortening  of  mental  and  moral 
perspective  follows  the  same  laws  as  the  fore- 
shortening of  optical  perspective ;  and  the  descent 
from  moral  heights  is  followed  by  the  same  ever 
narrowing  horizon  as  the  descent  from  physical 
heights.  It  was  this  descent  from  the  ideal  to  the 
material,  from  a  worship  of  the  soul  to  the  worship 
of  the  body,  that  started  the  downward  march  of 
the  Greek  and  Roman  civilizations.  In  fact,  it  is 
in  the  very  apotheosis  of  the  Pheidean  sculpture 
—culminating  in  the  highest  attainment  of  art 
ever  reached  by  man — that  materially  tipped  the 
balance  of  spirituality,  and  creative  art  took  its 
departure  from  man,  as  an  expression  of  God,  to 
God,  as  an  expression  of  man.  From  this  turning 
point  of  personal  ambition  the  subsequent  masters 
of  creative  art  took  their  suggestions  and  started 
their  spiritual  descent  through  the  interpretation 
of  God  in  terms  of  man,  in  place  of  man  in  terms 
of  God.  Slowly  the  personal  interest  assumed  the 
dominance  over  spiritual  interests,  and  in  the  con- 
summation of  events  the  ambitions  for  temporal 
power  and  material  welfare  became  the  leading 
motives  in  history. 

It  is  here,  in  the  attitude  of  egotism,  that  the 
forces  of  limitation  begin  to  discover  the  individual 
from  his  spiritual  motor  power  and  give  rise  to  the 


91 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

slowly  increasing  nervous  exhausture  which  must 
inevitably  follow  from  a  departure  of  life  which 
proposes  to  sustain  individual  evolution  on  the 
basis  of  its  own  isolated  reactions.  Cut  off  from 
the  constructive  and  regenerative  currents  of  the 
larger  life  of  humanity,  where  moral  and  spiritual 
currents  vitalize  and  sustain  individual  conscious- 
ness, like  the  circulating  fluids  of  the  body  sustain 
the  vital  needs  of  his  physical  organism — the  self- 
centered  egotist  will  find  his  moral  nature  turn 
into  a  stagnant  pool  of  moral  putrefaction. 

Out  of  this  degeneracy,  caused  by  an  all-absorb- 
ing interest  in  himself  and  a  corresponding  dis- 
regard for  other  selves,  the  individual  generates  in 
his  own  nature  the  seeds  of  sorrow  and  suffering 
which,  in  due  time,  will  bring  forth  the  dead-sea- 
fruit  in  the  tragedies  of  civilization,  which  in  the 
form  of  class  hatred,  revolutions,  wars  and  strikes, 
have  from  time  immemorial  terriorized  humanity. 
It  is  the  historical  actualization  of  the  ancient  par- 
able where  the  house  built  on  sand  points  out  the 
eternal  warning  to  every  builder,  be  it  of  houses 
or  nations,  of  structures  of  the  mind  or  structures 
of  matter,  that  the  life  work  not  founded  on  the 
rock  of  human  solidarity  shall  fail  to  weather  the 
storms  of  evolutionary  or  revolutionary  changes. 

Plato  was  right — ideals  rule  the  world.  The 
ideals  of  the  good,  the  true  and  the  beautiful  are 
yet  the  unvarying  standards  for  the  valuation  of 
human  progress.  And  every  departure  from  this 
universal  "rule  of  three,"  be  it  in  art,  science  or 
religion — when  human  actions  cease  to  be  gauged 
by  this  world  standard  of  conduct — the  individual 
will  find  himself  removed  from  reciprocal  rela- 
tionship with  the  great  regenerating  and  sustain- 


92 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LIVING 

ing  forces  of  physical,  mental  or  moral  evolution. 

It  is  the  failure  of  modern  society  to  apply  this 
Platonic  "rule  of  three"  to  its  general  culture  and 
art  life  that  has  brought  about  the  hollow  mockery 
of  its  prestations,  the  grotesqueness  of  its  pos- 
tures, the  shallowness  of  its  interpretations,  and 
self-indulgence  of  its  motives.  Art,  to  be  creative, 
ennobling  and  graceful,  must  forget  itself  in  its 
motives.  Art  for  art's  sake  is  as  stupid  and  non- 
productive as  science  for  science's  sake,  or  reli- 
gion for  religion's  sake.  In  either  domain  the 
attitude  spells  self-consumption,  mental  tubercu- 
losis with  the  subsequent  moral  infection  of  the 
personality. 

Life  is  essentially  moral  and  universal.  Its  flow 
has  only  one  course,  and  that  course  is  upward.  In 
this  course  every  motive  must  have  its  confluence 
if  the  evolution  of  man  shall  be  crowned  by  suc- 
cess. On  the  other  hand,  to  divert  from  this  course 
means  infraction  of  fundamental,  life-determining 
laws,  with  its  inevitable  consequence  in  moral 
blindness,  mental  confusion,  esthetic  delirium  and 
physical  degeneracy. 

It  is  his  desire  to  escape  from  the  stern  duties  of 
pressing  realities  that  so  often  lead  the  mind  of 
the  self-seeking  "New  Thought"  devotee  to  the 
p^yground  of  placid  abstractions  and  fairy  spun 
theories.  The  practice  of  ordinary,  concrete  vir- 
tues and  social  duties  seems  too  slow  and  disin- 
te^sting  for  his  soaring  ambitions  which  prefer 
tv ^  ""ckle  hide-and-seek  game  of  a  "sixth  sense" 
a^;~  a  "fourth  dimension"  to  the  trying  responsi- 
b  ''es  involved  in  the  practice  of  square  ethics 
Common  sense.  In  his  straining  for  personal 


NEW  LIGHT  ON  LINING 

advance  and  advantage  he  forgets  that  every  ef- 
fort of  functional  development,  be  it  psychic,  in- 
tellectual or  metaphysical,  which  has  not  its  inspir- 
ing, qualifying  and  determining  motive  in  the 
m»ral  elevation  and  universal  comradeship  of 
man,  so  far  from  being  of  any  real  essential  value 
to  the  individual  himself,  is  a  more  or  less  danger- 
ous juggling  with  uncontrollable  psychic  forces— 
a  squandering  with  energies  which  could  and 
should  be  used  on  the  moral  plane  in  practical 
altruistic  service. 


Blood  and  Nerve  Diseases 

Cloth,  $1.50 

"This  is  Dr.  Gibson's  latest  contribution  to  the 
science  of  human  nutrition.  Through  a  series  of 
ingenious  and  self-administrative  processes,  involv- 
ing the  healing  forces,  both  of  Body  and  Mind, 
through  the  agencies  of  food,  motion,  breath,  and 
thought,- — the  author  brings  out  a  system  of  treat- 
ment by  which  the  most  deep-reaching  and  destruc- 
tive disease  of  blood  and  nerves — syphilis — can  be 
cured." 

This  book  is  based  upon  many  years  of  exper- 
ience in  the  handling  of  problems  connected  with 
the  all-important  subject  of  food  values.  It  covers, 
in  non-technical  language,  all  of  the  diseases  of 
Nerves  and  Blood,  sets  forth  the  best  way  to  rem- 
edy them;  and  discusses  in  plain  language  problems 
of  the  utmost  importance  to  all  men  and  women. 


"Diet     and  What  It  Isn't" 


Popular  Edition,  $1.00 

A  treatise  dealing  with  the  latest  findings  of  sci- 
ence, applied  to  the  practical  ways  of  preparing, 
•ating  and  digesting  our  foodstuffs. 


Facts  and  Fancies  in 
"Health  Foods" 

Castilian  Cover.  128  Pages. 

PRICK:   $1.00  Postpaid 

TABLE   OF  CONTENTS 

1.  Basis  for  Longevity — True  or  False. 

2.  The  Failure  of  the  Calories. 

3.  Food  Mixtures  that  Disturb  Digestion. 

4.  The  Psychic  Factor  in  Digestion. 

5.  Does  Bran  and  Hull  Cure  Constipation? 

6.  Temperament  and  Nutrition. 

7.  The  Psychology  of  Meat-eating. 

8.  The  Law  of  Individuality  in  Diet. 

9.  Acid-free    Diet    More    Important   than 

"Mucous-free." 

10.  The  "Bulgarized"  Milk  Indulgence. 

11.  The  Deeper  Effects  of  "Food"  Yeast. 

12.  Sugar — Food  or  Poison? 

13.  Right  and  Wrong  Side  of  Coffee. 

14.  The  Use  and  Misuse  of  Honey. 

15.  Health-Foods  that  spell  Health. 

16.  The  Scientifically  Balanced  Bill-of-Fare. 

17.  Things  to  be  Avoided. 

18.  General  Constructive  Therapeutics. 


"Sugar  and  Salt" 

Popular  Edition,  $1.OO 

Dear  Mr.   Gibson: 

....   You  have  written  a  splendid  book  which 
ought  to  give  you  a  lot  of  well-earned  reputation. 
The  public   needs  a  clearly  defined  understanding 
of  the  relation  of  their  health  to  sugar  and  salt. 
Yours  very  truly, 

J.  H.  TILDEN,  Denver,  Colo. 


Dr.  Axel  Emil  Gibson,  a  recognized  authority  on 
diet,  has  brought  out  a  new  book  entitled,  "Sugar 
and  Salt — Foods  or  Poisons?"  It  is,  probably,  the 
most  complete  treatise  on  these  articles  ever  pub- 
lished. He  treats  not  only  of  the  chemical  con- 
stituents of  these  articles  and  their  effect  upon  the 
physical  system,  but  he  also  shows  the  effect  upon 
the  intellectuality  and  the  morals  of  the  consumer. 
— "Hygienic  and  Dietetic  Gazette,"  New  York  City. 


In  the  34  chapters  of  this  interesting  book  the 
readers  will  find  unsuspected  informations  con- 
cerning the  practical,  medicinal  value  contained 
in  a  judicious  use  of  sugar  and  salt. 

The  book  has  135  pages,  and  contains  a  portrait 
of  the  author. — "Health  Culture  Magazine." 


-  — .»in    tifxANGH 

v  cRSITY  01 

SELES/CALMf, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


JUL 


Form  I/J-Serii's  444 


58  00864  6969 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  UBRARV^CIUTV^ 

A    001377771 


